As Marty King discovered, there's a law against adultery in Florida, and (lucky for him) it can be enforced.
You might think this is just one more indication that Florida is among the most backwards states in the union, sexually speaking. One website devoted to "Dumb Laws" in the U.S. even lists the following as illegal in the Sunshine State: "One may not commit any 'unnatural acts' with another person" and "Unmarried couples may not commit 'lewd acts' and live together in the same residence." (I'm not even going to mention the prohibition against sex with porcupines.)
But get your Internet-sized grain of salt ready: it's not exactly true.
Technically speaking, Florida's "sodomy law" is still on the books. You can find it at Florida Statutes 800.02. This vague and broad law says that a "person who commits any unnatural and lascivious act with another person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree." It doesn't define what constitutes unnatural and lascivious, but it does specifically exempt mothers breastfeeding babies in public.
Florida's original sodomy law was aimed at forbidding homosexual anal sex and dated to 1942, when the state made it a felony punishable by death. Although no one was ever executed for going Greek, the Florida Supreme Court in 1943 held the notion of the death penalty for sodomy as constitutional, according to sodomylaws.org.
In the early 1970s, however, the state's highest court struck the felony "crimes against nature" law (and the specter of the death penalty) and upheld a newer misdemeanor sex law, the one that exists today at 800.02. It was this law that was infrequently used to arrest homosexuals, although most of the cases involved a public exposure aspect.
It soon fell out of use. Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, wrote at sodomylaws.org, "My understanding is that no Floridian has gone to court on this misdemeanor charge since the passage of Florida's Privacy Amendment in 1980 — one of the strongest privacy provisions in the country."
The last nail in the coffin of 800.02 came in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas. Even though the state hasn't repealed its statute in the wake of that decision, legal scholars agree it is dead in the water.
Laws still remain on the books, of course, against bigamy, lewd and lascivious conduct, and rape. Otherwise, go ahead and have all of the unnatural and unmarried sex you want.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.