United States
State laws still on the books, Lawrence v. Texas, purity culture and the King James Bible: the subject looks very different from one state to another. These are the topics fornication.info covers for American readers.
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Sections
Religion
What scripture, churches and faith communities teach about sex outside marriage, and how that teaching has changed.
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Law
What the law says today, what it used to say, and the court rulings that changed it.
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Language
The words used for fornication, adultery and infidelity, where they come from and how their meaning shifted.
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History
How the country named, judged and eventually stopped punishing sex outside marriage.
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Society
Marriage, cohabitation and births outside marriage: what official statistics and public debates show.
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Culture
Novels, plays, films and songs that put sin, morality and censorship on stage.
10 topics →Religion
Fornication in the Bible: Key Verses from the King James Version
The King James Bible uses “fornication” 26 times to translate the Greek porneia, a broad term for illicit sexual relations. Paul tells readers to “flee fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:18), lists it among the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19) and presents marriage as a safeguard (1 Corinthians 7:2). Churches differ on how widely the word applies.
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Sex Before Marriage and Sin: How Christian Denominations Differ
Catholic, Latter-day Saint and evangelical churches teach that sex belongs only within marriage, while some mainline Protestant bodies now use more open wording. Believers are more divided than their churches: in Pew’s October 2019 survey, 57% of U.S. Christians said sex between unmarried adults in a committed relationship is sometimes or always acceptable.
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What the Catholic Catechism Says About Fornication
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines fornication as carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman (paragraph 2353). It calls it gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality, and treats it under the sixth commandment, which Church tradition reads as covering the whole of human sexuality.
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The Latter-day Saint Law of Chastity Explained
The law of chastity is a commandment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: no sexual relations outside a legal marriage between a man and a woman. Members who commit serious sexual sins are asked to confess to a bishop or stake president. Church schools such as BYU write the same standard into their Honor Code.
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How American Evangelicals View Sex Before Marriage
Evangelical churches generally teach that sex is reserved for marriage, a message popularized from the 1990s by pledge campaigns such as True Love Waits. Evangelicals were the most conservative major Christian group in Pew’s 2019 survey: 46% said sex in a committed unmarried relationship is sometimes or always acceptable, versus 67% of mainline Protestants.
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Living Together Before Marriage: What Christian Teaching Says
Many churches treat cohabitation as "living in sin" when it involves a sexual relationship, citing passages such as 1 Corinthians 7:2. American believers disagree: Pew found in 2019 that 74% of Catholics accept unmarried couples living together even if they do not plan to marry, compared with 47% of Black Protestants and 35% of white evangelicals.
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"Flee Fornication": Reading 1 Corinthians 6:18 in Context
"Flee fornication" is the King James wording of 1 Corinthians 6:18, where Paul tells the church at Corinth to run from porneia and argues that this sin, unlike others, is committed against one's own body. The NIV renders it "flee from sexual immorality." The next verse calls the body a temple of the Holy Ghost.
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What Hebrews 13:4 Says About Marriage, Whoremongers and Adulterers
Hebrews 13:4 states in the King James Version that marriage is honourable and the marriage bed undefiled, and warns that God will judge "whoremongers and adulterers." The Greek word behind "whoremongers," pornos, is also translated "fornicator" elsewhere in the KJV. Christians often cite the verse to argue that sex belongs within marriage.
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Fornication and the Ten Commandments: What "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" Covers
Not by name. The Ten Commandments say "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14), which in biblical law meant intercourse involving a married woman. Many churches read it more broadly: Catholic tradition, which counts it as the sixth commandment, says it covers the whole of human sexuality, and Presbyterian catechisms list fornication under the seventh.
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"Saving for the Cause of Fornication": Understanding Matthew 5:32
In Matthew 5:32 Jesus says that a man who divorces his wife causes her to commit adultery, "saving for the cause of fornication." The Greek word is porneia. Readings divide: many Protestant churches see this exception clause as permitting divorce after sexual unfaithfulness, while churches that hold marriage indissoluble, including the Catholic Church, read it far more narrowly.
View the topic →Law
Fornication Laws Still on the Books in the United States
As of October 2026, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi and Illinois still have statutes punishing fornication or unmarried cohabitation, and North Dakota keeps a narrow section bearing the name. After Lawrence v. Texas (2003), these laws are not considered enforceable against consenting adults in private. Massachusetts, Utah, Virginia, Idaho and Minnesota repealed theirs between 2018 and 2023.
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How Lawrence v. Texas Undermined Fornication Laws
Not directly. Lawrence v. Texas (June 26, 2003) struck down a Texas same-sex sodomy law, ruling 6-3, with five justices holding that the Due Process Clause protects private consensual conduct between adults, and overruled Bowers v. Hardwick. Justice Scalia's dissent listed fornication laws among those called into question, and courts and commentators now treat such laws as unenforceable.
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Eisenstadt v. Baird: Contraception, Unmarried Couples and the Fornication Law
In Eisenstadt v. Baird (March 22, 1972), the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law that limited contraceptives to married people, finding that it violated equal protection. The Court refused to believe the law aimed to deter fornication, then a 90-day misdemeanor in Massachusetts, and tied the right of privacy to the individual, married or single.
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Griswold v. Connecticut and the Birth of the Right to Privacy
Griswold v. Connecticut (June 7, 1965) struck down, by 7 votes to 2, a Connecticut ban on the use of contraceptives as applied to married couples, finding a right of marital privacy in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights. Justice Goldberg's concurrence noted that Connecticut separately prohibited adultery and fornication, statutes he treated as constitutional.
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Georgia's Fornication Statute and the In re J.M. Ruling
Georgia's code still defines fornication as voluntary intercourse by an unmarried person, punishable as a misdemeanor (O.C.G.A. § 16-6-18). But on January 13, 2003, in In re J.M., the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the state constitution's right to privacy bars prosecution for private, unforced, non-commercial sex between people legally able to consent.
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North Carolina's 1805 Law Against Unmarried Cohabitation
On paper, yes. North Carolina General Statute 14-184, traced to an 1805 act, makes it a Class 2 misdemeanor for a man and woman not married to each other to "lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together." Prosecutions are rare, a Pender County Superior Court judge declared it unconstitutional in 2006, and a 2007 repeal bill died in committee.
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Mississippi's Unlawful Cohabitation Statute Explained
On paper, yes. Mississippi Code § 97-29-1 still punishes a man and woman who "unlawfully cohabit, whether in adultery or fornication," with a fine of up to $500 each and up to six months in county jail. Habitual intercourse can be proved by circumstances. Prosecutions are rare, and Lawrence v. Texas casts doubt on its use against consenting adults.
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South Carolina's Adultery and Fornication Statutes
Yes, on paper. South Carolina Code § 16-15-60 still makes adultery and fornication crimes, punishable by a $100 to $500 fine, six months to one year in prison, or both. Under § 16-15-80, fornication means two unmarried people living together with intercourse, or having habitual intercourse without living together. The text dates from 1880.
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How Idaho Repealed Its Fornication and Adultery Laws in 2022
No. Senate Bill 1325, signed on March 22, 2022 and effective July 1, 2022, repealed Idaho Code § 18-6601 (adultery) and § 18-6603 (fornication), along with the crime against nature. A state criminal justice subcommittee had concluded in 2021 that the laws on sex outside marriage conflicted with Lawrence v. Texas. Section 18-6603 now covers a different offense.
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Virginia's Fornication Law, From Martin v. Ziherl to Repeal
No. In Martin v. Ziherl, decided on January 14, 2005, the Supreme Court of Virginia held the state's fornication statute unconstitutional as applied to private, consensual sex between unmarried adults. The law, a Class 4 misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $250, stayed in the code until House Bill 245 repealed § 18.2-344, effective July 1, 2020.
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Is Cheating Illegal? Adultery Laws in the United States, State by State
Yes, in part. In November 2026, at least 15 states still list adultery, or living together in adultery, as a crime, from a $10 fine in Maryland to felonies in Michigan, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Prosecutions are rare and usually start with a spouse's complaint. New York, Minnesota, Idaho, Utah and Massachusetts repealed their laws between 2018 and 2024.
View the topic →Language
What Fornication Means: Everyday, Legal and Biblical Definitions
Fornication means consensual sexual intercourse between two people who are not married to each other, as Merriam-Webster defines it. The word has been used in English since about 1300. In US law it names a misdemeanor listed in a few state codes, and in the King James Bible it translates the Greek porneia, a broader term for illicit sex.
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From Roman Arches to Sin: The Origin of the Word Fornication
Fornication comes from Late Latin fornicatio, built on the verb fornicari, itself formed from Latin fornix, an arch or vaulted chamber. In Horace and Juvenal, fornix also meant a brothel, perhaps because prostitutes worked in vaulted rooms or under arches. The word reached English around 1300 through Old French fornicacion.
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Fornication or Adultery? How the Two Words Differ
Adultery is sex in which at least one partner is married to someone else; fornication is sex between two unmarried people. South Carolina's code still draws exactly that line. Some older laws turned on the woman's marital status alone, and in the King James Bible fornication can be a wider term that also covers adultery.
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Fornicators and Whoremongers: Old Words in the King James Bible
In the King James Bible, "fornicator" and "whoremonger" both translate the Greek pornos, which occurs ten times in the New Testament and is rendered five times each way. The word first meant a male prostitute, then any man engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse. Hebrews 13:4 warns that God will judge "whoremongers and adulterers."
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Why Modern Bibles Say "Sexual Immorality" Instead of Fornication
Both render the Greek porneia, which the King James Version translates as "fornication" all 26 times it occurs in its Greek text. Lexicons define porneia broadly as illicit sexual intercourse, including adultery and incest, and figuratively idolatry. The NIV and ESV prefer "sexual immorality" to cover that range, as in "Flee from sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:18).
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What "Living in Sin" Means and Why the Phrase Is Fading
"Living in sin" is an old-fashioned phrase, Merriam-Webster says, for a couple who live together and have sex without being married. Recorded in that sense since 1838, it reflects Christian teaching on marriage and echoes state laws against cohabitation. It has faded as attitudes shifted: in 2019, 69% of Americans found cohabitation acceptable even without marriage plans.
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Debunked: "Fornication Under Consent of the King"
No. The acronym story is a modern invention. Etymonline calls acronym explanations of the f-word an "unkillable urban legend" traceable online to 1995. The word is attested in English long before acronyms were fashionable, with the spelling fukkit in 1503 and the modern spelling in 1535. Fornication itself comes from Latin fornix, an arch.
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Shotgun Weddings: Meaning and History of an American Expression
A shotgun wedding is a marriage hurried along because the bride is pregnant. Etymonline records the phrase in American English by 1903, and Merriam-Webster dates the pregnancy sense to 1929. The custom faded as contraception spread and births outside marriage became common: in 2024, 39.5% of US births were to unmarried women, according to the CDC.
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From "Fornication" to "Premarital Sex": How American Vocabulary Changed
Largely, yes. Cornell's Legal Information Institute says fornication is now more commonly called premarital sex. The difference is tone: fornication carries legal and biblical weight, while premarital sex, attested from 1953, sounds neutral. Surveys often avoid both terms; Gallup asks whether sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable.
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"Lewd and Lascivious" and Other Legal Terms in Old Sex Statutes
The phrase comes from statutes such as North Carolina's 1805 law, which punishes an unmarried man and woman who "lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together." Mississippi speaks of unlawful cohabitation, and South Carolina of habitual carnal intercourse. The statutes target an ongoing sexual relationship rather than shared housing; North Carolina's does not reach platonic roommates.
View the topic →History
Fornication in Puritan New England: Crime, Court and Punishment
New England's Puritan colonies treated fornication as a crime under laws shaped by Scripture. In Plymouth Colony, a sample of court records from 1633 to 1643 shows 19 fornication convictions, punished by whipping, the stocks, fines or a bond for good behavior. In the 1660s, fornication convictions equaled drunkenness convictions, at 35 each.
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Were Scarlet Letters Real? Shaming Punishments in Colonial America
Yes, in some cases. Plymouth Colony's 1658 law ordered convicted adulterers to be whipped and to wear the cloth letters "AD" on their clothing, and a 1694 Massachusetts law required a capital A two inches long. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) turned this kind of penalty into the story of Hester Prynne.
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A History of Fornication Laws in the United States
There was no single date. Fornication laws came from colonial codes and survived statehood: North Carolina's cohabitation statute dates to 1805, Georgia's to laws of 1833 and South Carolina's to 1880. Courts and legislatures dismantled them piecemeal. Since Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the remaining statutes are considered unenforceable against consenting adults in private.
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Race and Fornication Laws: From Pace v. Alabama to McLaughlin v. Florida
In Pace v. Alabama (January 29, 1883), the Supreme Court upheld an Alabama law punishing interracial adultery or fornication with two to seven years in prison, far more than the ordinary offense. It reasoned that both partners received the same penalty. McLaughlin v. Florida (December 7, 1964) struck down an interracial cohabitation law and rejected Pace's view of equal protection.
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The Mann Act and Caminetti v. United States: Policing Unmarried Couples
In practice it could. In Caminetti v. United States (January 15, 1917), the Supreme Court held that the Mann Act's ban on interstate transport for an "immoral purpose" covered taking a woman from Sacramento to Reno as a mistress, with no money involved. Since 1986 the law, 18 U.S.C. § 2421, refers instead to prostitution or criminal sexual activity.
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When an Idaho County Prosecuted Teenagers for Fornication
One well-documented case came in 1996, when the Gem County prosecutor in Idaho revived a fornication law that the press dated to 1921 against pregnant teenagers and their boyfriends; press estimates ranged from about six to ten young people charged. The offense carried up to six months in jail and a $300 fine. Idaho repealed the law in 2022.
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The Kinsey Reports and Premarital Sex in Postwar America
Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), built on thousands of interviews, reported that sex before marriage was far more common than Americans admitted: about 85% of men and roughly half of women in his samples. Later federal survey data put the figure at 95% by age 44.
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Bowers v. Hardwick: The 1986 Ruling That Lawrence Overturned
In Bowers v. Hardwick (June 30, 1986), the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's sodomy law 5-4, finding no constitutional right to the conduct at issue. Georgia's own Supreme Court struck the law down under the state constitution in 1998, and in 2003 Lawrence v. Texas expressly overruled Bowers, undermining laws that punish private sex between consenting adults, fornication statutes included.
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Massachusetts and Fornication: From Bible Commonwealth to Repeal
Yes, for more than three and a half centuries. A colonial law of 1642 let judges punish fornication by ordering marriage, a fine or corporal punishment. By 1972, as Eisenstadt v. Baird recorded, it was a misdemeanor carrying a thirty-dollar fine or three months in jail. Chapter 155 of the Acts of 2018 repealed it, along with adultery.
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Utah's 1973 Fornication Law and Its 2019 Repeal
Utah repealed Code § 76-7-104, its 1973 law making sex between unmarried people a class B misdemeanor, through Senate Bill 43 in 2019. The House passed it 41-32 and Governor Gary Herbert signed it on March 27, 2019; the repeal took effect May 14, 2019. A separate bill, House Bill 40, repealed adultery and consensual sodomy that year.
View the topic →Society
How Many Americans Have Sex Before Marriage? What the Data Show
Nearly all of them. A study of National Survey of Family Growth data, published in 2007, found that by age 44, 95% of Americans had had premarital sex, including 94% of women and 96% of men. Only about 3% had abstained until marriage, and by age 20, 75% had already had premarital sex.
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Is Sex Outside Marriage Morally Acceptable? American Opinion Over Time
In Gallup's May 2026 poll, 65% of Americans said sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable, and 31% called it morally wrong. Acceptance rose from 53% in 2001 to a peak of 76% in 2022, then slipped. Party is a sharp divide: 46% of Republicans and 83% of Democrats called it acceptable.
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Cohabitation in America: More Common Than Marriage for Young Adults
Cohabitation is now a more common experience than marriage among younger adults. Pew reported in 2019 that 59% of Americans aged 18 to 44 had lived with an unmarried partner, while 50% had ever married. People also marry later: the Census Bureau put the median age at first marriage at 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women in 2025.
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Purity Culture in America: Pledges, Rings and Their Critics
Purity culture is a movement within American evangelicalism that urged young people to pledge sexual abstinence until marriage, often with rings or signed cards. True Love Waits, a Lifeway campaign, began with students in the Nashville area. A 2009 study found pledgers no less likely than matched peers to have premarital sex, but less likely to use contraception.
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Abstinence-Only Education: Federal Funding and State Rules
Yes. Section 510 of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 710, funds "sexual risk avoidance education" at $75 million a year for fiscal years 2018 through 2026. Funded programs must present avoiding nonmarital sexual activity as the optimal health behavior. At the state level, Guttmacher counts 43 states and DC where the law requires abstinence to be covered or stressed.
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Births Outside Marriage in the US: Numbers and Changing Views
In 2024, 39.5% of US births were to unmarried women, about 1.43 million babies, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Opinion has shifted too, if unevenly: in Gallup's 2026 poll, 58% of Americans called having a baby outside marriage morally acceptable, down from 67% a year earlier.
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Faith and Sex Outside Marriage: How US Religious Groups Differ
Views vary widely by faith. In Pew's 2019 survey, 79% of religiously unaffiliated adults said sex between unmarried adults in a committed relationship is sometimes or always acceptable, compared with 67% of mainline Protestants, 64% of Catholics, 57% of historically Black Protestants and 46% of evangelicals. Frequent churchgoers were least accepting.
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Chastity Rules at Religious Colleges: BYU's Honor Code and Beyond
The Church Educational System Honor Code, which governs Brigham Young University, asks students to "live a chaste and virtuous life," defined as abstaining from sexual relations outside a marriage between a man and a woman. It mirrors the Latter-day Saint law of chastity, which the Church describes as having no sexual relations outside a legal marriage.
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Can Unmarried Couples Share a Hotel Room? North Carolina's Odd Law
Not in practice, but one statute remains. North Carolina General Statute 14-186, dating to 1917, makes it a Class 2 misdemeanor for a man and woman to occupy the same hotel bedroom "for any immoral purpose" or to register falsely as husband and wife. Such laws are considered unenforceable for consenting adults after Lawrence v. Texas.
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Later Marriage, Longer Singlehood: What It Means for Sex Before Marriage
In 2025 the median age at first marriage in the United States was 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women, up from 23.5 and 21.1 in 1975, according to the Census Bureau. A Guttmacher Institute analysis of a federal survey found about three in four Americans had sex by age 20, so most spend years as sexually active unmarried adults.
View the topic →Culture
Sin and Shame in The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne's Puritan Boston
Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter follows Hester Prynne, a married woman in 17th-century Puritan Boston who bears a child outside her marriage and is forced to wear a scarlet "A." Britannica calls it a classic moral study. Hawthorne drew on real colonial practice: Plymouth Colony courts ordered adulterers to wear the letters "AD."
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Adultery and Reputation in Arthur Miller's The Crucible
Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible dramatizes the 1692 Salem witch trials, in which 19 people were hanged, as an allegory of McCarthy-era anti-communist hunts. Its plot turns on John Proctor's past affair with Abigail Williams: that hidden episode feeds her accusations and forces him to choose between confession and his good name.
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Easy A and the Scarlet Letter in American Teen Culture
Easy A, a 2010 comedy starring Emma Stone as high-school student Olive, borrows the plot device of The Scarlet Letter. A false rumor about Olive's sex life spreads through school, a self-appointed religious leader tries to shame her, and Olive takes ownership of her reputation, echoing Hester Prynne's scarlet "A" in a modern setting.
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How the Hays Code Kept Sex Outside Marriage Off the Screen
The Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code, was Hollywood's self-imposed rulebook from 1934 to 1968. Adopted partly in response to public outrage and the threat of government censorship, it barred depictions of promiscuity, profanity and obscenity, among other content. The current film rating system replaced it in 1968.
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The Oneida Community and Its "Complex Marriage" Experiment
The Oneida Community was a religious utopian society led by John Humphrey Noyes, which grew from a group he formed in Putney, Vermont, around 1841 and lived at Oneida, New York, from 1848 to 1880. It practiced "complex marriage," rejecting exclusive couples, which set it sharply apart from the marriage norms and laws of its time.
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The Bible Belt and Sexual Morality in the American South
The Bible Belt is a region, chiefly in the southern United States, whose residents are believed to hold strong fundamentalist Protestant views; Merriam-Webster dates the term to 1924. Several Southern states still carry fornication or cohabitation statutes. Pew found in 2019 that only 35% of white evangelical Protestants accept unmarried couples living together without plans to marry.
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Are Americans Puritanical About Sex? The Stereotype and the Evidence
"Puritanical" means rigidly moral, and it recalls the Puritans who settled New England from 1630 and drew their criminal law largely from the Old Testament. The label persists in debates over sex, film and morals laws. Surveys complicate it: Gallup found in May 2026 that 65% of Americans call sex between unmarried adults morally acceptable.
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Fact-Checking Viral Lists of "Weird Sex Laws" in America
Some are, many are not. A widely shared 2021 list named Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah as banning sex outside marriage, but Massachusetts repealed its law in 2018, Utah in 2019 and Idaho in 2022. The laws that remain are considered unenforceable after Lawrence v. Texas.
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Why Americans Still Say "Fornication": The King James Bible's Legacy
Largely because of the King James Version, published in 1611 and long the dominant English Bible. It renders the Greek porneia as "fornication" 26 times, in lines such as "Flee fornication." Many American churches still read it, and an IUPUI study reported that 55% of Americans who read the Bible use the KJV.
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Alfred Kinsey in Pop Culture: From 1950s Celebrity to Hollywood Biopic
Alfred Kinsey's books on male (1948) and female (1953) sexual behavior became bestsellers and made the Indiana University biologist a public celebrity, inspiring jokes, songs and later novels. His data challenged official morality about sex outside marriage. Hollywood retold his life in the 2004 biopic Kinsey, with Liam Neeson in the title role.
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