WETZSTEIN: Adultery 'wrong' to most Americans

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By Cheryl Wetzstein

Clearly, Americans have softened their stance against premarital sex. This same America has vigorously held the line on adultery.

In most GSS surveys between 1972 to 2006, Americans were asked for their views of spouses having "sex with a person other than spouse."

In the 1970s, around 70 percent said extramarital sex was "always wrong." Today, even more people - 80 percent or more - take this hard-line view. More than a few find adultery unforgivable.

Amid news of the Spitzer affair, Gallup and USA Today polled people on whether they would forgive their spouses for a sexual affair. Only 10 percent said they "definitely" would forgive straying mates. The largest group - 38 percent - "definitely" would not forgive.

American wedding vows typically have a sentence in there about forsaking all others. But according to Hollywood movies, myriad music lyrics and Mr. Dershowitz, there's nothing out there but cheatin' hearts. Does this mean that we are, um, a nation of hypocrites?

Well, maybe not.

The federal government conducts a National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) every few years. In 2002, it asked more than 12,000 people, aged 15 to 44, how many sexual partners they had in the last 12 months. There's a line for marital status, so the married people's answers could be identified.

Among the wives, 93 percent said they had one - repeat, one - sexual partner in the last 12 months. Of the husbands, 92 percent said they had sex with one partner.

So, yes, the NSFG showed there are cheatin' hound-dog spouses out there. Headlines show that some of them even reach high office.

But, taken together, these numbers indicate that as powerful as the 1960s sexual revolution was, it didn't lay a finger on this particular example of U.S. social mores. Adultery is still a "thou shalt not."

Cheryl Wetzstein's On the Family column appears Tuesday and Sundays. E-mail here..