Import 1 List

Fornication generally refers to consensual sexual intercourse between two people who are not married to each other.[1][2] When a married person has consensual sexual relations with one or more partners whom they are not married to, it is called adultery. John Calvin viewed adultery to be a sexual act that is considered outside of the divine model for sexual intercourse between married individuals, which includes fornication.[3]

For many people, the term carries an overtone of moral or religious disapproval, but the significance of sexual acts to which the term is applied varies between religions, societies, and cultures. In modern usage, the term is often replaced with more judgment-neutral terms like premarital sex, extramarital sex, or recreational sex.[4]

Etymology and usage
In the original Greek version of the New Testament, the term porneia (πορνεία – "prostitution") is used 25 times (including variants such as the genitive πορνείας).[5]

In the late 4th century, the Latin Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Greek texts, translated the term as fornicati, fornicatus, fornicata, and fornicatae. The terms fornication and fornicators are found in the 1599 Geneva Bible, the 1611 King James Version, the 1899 Catholic Douay–Rheims Bible, and the 1901 American Standard Version.[6][7] Many modern post-World War 2 Bible translations completely avoid all usage of fornicators and fornication: English Standard Version, New Living Translation, New International Version, Christian Standard Bible, Good News Bible and Contemporary English Version do not use the terms fornication or fornicators.[8] Where one translation may use fornication another translation may use whoredom, sexual immorality (e.g., Matthew 19:9) or more simply immoral or immorality.[9][10][11]

In Latin, the term fornix means arch or vault. In ancient Rome, prostitutes waited for their customers out of the rain under vaulted ceilings,[12] and fornix became a euphemism for brothels, and the Latin verb fornicare referred to a man visiting a brothel.[13][14][15] The first recorded use in English is in the Cursor Mundi, c. 1300; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records a figurative use as well: "The forsaking of God for idols".[16] Fornicated as an adjective is still used in botany, meaning "arched" or "bending over" (as in a leaf). John Milton plays on the double meaning of the word in The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty (1642): "[She] gives up her body to a mercenary whordome under those fornicated [ar]ches which she cals Gods house."[17]

Across history, cultures, and laws
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The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this section, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new section, as appropriate. (February 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
A survey undertaken by the American Sociological Review between 2000 and 2008 covering 31 developing countries found that "94 percent of Jews... reported having premarital sex, compared to 79 percent of Christians, 65 percent of Buddhists, 43 percent of Muslims and 19 percent of Hindus."[18]

Roman Empire
During the sixth century, Emperor Justinian formulated legislation that was to become the basis of Western marriage law for the next millennium. Under his laws, cohabiting couples were no longer recognised as married and their children were regarded as illegitimate, with the same status as the children of prostitutes. However, the status of illegitimate children could be updated if the parents later married.[19]

Great Britain
In the 1170s, "it was common practice for ordinary couples to cohabit before marriage and for cousins to marry one another"[20] and there was very little stigma around bastards at any social level in medieval England.[21] For instance, William the Conqueror's right to succeed to the throne of Normandy was never questioned on the grounds he was a bastard nor, in his conflict with Harold Godwinson over who should rule England, was this issue raised as an argument against him. However, attitudes shifted a few generations later when bastards were no longer able to claim the English throne.[22] The Waldensians were a medieval sect accused of fornication and of not regarding it a sin.[23][24]

During the ascendancy of the Puritans, an Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery and Fornication was passed by the English Council of State in 1650.[25] At the Restoration in 1660, this statute was not renewed, and prosecution of the mere act of fornication itself was abandoned. However, notorious and open lewdness, when carried to the extent of exciting public scandal, continued to be an indictable offence at common law, however fornication in a private sense was not illegal.[26]

Prior to the passing of the Marriage Act 1753, laws against bastard children became more strict during the 1730s and 1740s.[27]

In the Victorian era, however, the English working class continued to have a different set of sexual mores from the upper-middle and upper classes. Premarital intercourse was considered acceptable for the working class but only after an extended period of courtship and occurred infrequently even then. The couple were expected to marry, though. Disgrace only arose if the female became pregnant and the couple did not marry.[28][29]

United States
Ethical issues arising from sexual relations between consenting adults who have reached the age of consent have generally been viewed as matters of private morality, and so have not generally been prosecuted as criminal offenses in the common law.[30] This legal position was inherited by the United States from the United Kingdom. Later, some jurisdictions, a total of 16 in the southern and eastern United States, as well as the states of Wisconsin[30]: 353  and Utah,[31] passed statutes creating the offense of fornication that prohibited (vaginal) sexual intercourse between two unmarried people of the opposite sex. Most of these laws either were repealed or were struck down by the courts in several states as being odious to their state constitutions. In Pollard v. Lyon (1875), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a District of Columbia U.S. District Court ruling that spoken words by the defendant in the case that accused the plaintiff of fornication were not actionable for slander because fornication, although involving moral turpitude, was not an indictable offense in the District of Columbia at the time as it had not been an indictable offense in Maryland since 1785 (when a provincial law passed in 1715 that banned both fornication and adultery saw only its fornication prohibition repealed by the Maryland General Assembly).[32] See also State v. Saunders, 381 A.2d 333 (N.J. 1977), Martin v. Ziherl, 607 S.E.2d 367 (Va. 2005). As of December 2023, the only states in America that have laws banning fornication are:

Georgia (Official Code of Georgia Annotated, § 16-6-18)
Illinois (Illinois Compiled Statutes, § 720-5/11-40)
Mississippi (Unannotated Mississippi Code, § 97-29-1)
North Carolina (North Carolina General Statutes, § 14-26-184)
North Dakota (North Dakota Century Code, § 12.1-20-08) (note: even though the crime is called "fornication", it only refers to having sex with minors or having sex in public. It doesn't target private consensual sex between adults, so in practice this law is irrelevant; it's only listed here for the sake of completeness because the crime is called "fornication" under the North Dakotan law)
A woman was arrested in Mississippi in 2010 for fornication,[33] but the charges were dismissed.[34] North Carolina has a slightly more involved but still relevant law stating, "if any man and woman, not being married to each other, shall lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together, they shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor."[35]