RC brainwashing would hold the following :  the married person is committing both fornication [sexual intercourse without the benefit of marriage] and adultery [sexual intercourse with someone other than one's spouse]; the unmarried person is merelty committing fornication.


This no doubt varies according to whatever organized body of superstitious myyh you were brought up in, but that's the take of my onetime coreligionists, and i don't think it's been revised.

Adultery cannot be interpreted today in precisely the meaning it bore for the Old Testament patriarchs. On Old Testament principles one may marry several wives, even two sisters; and a married man may and should beget children for his dead brother. When Sarah found herself childless, she advised her husband Abraham to go in unto her maid, so that she might obtain children by the maid. Such acts, though evidently not adulterous within the original meaning of the Decalogue, would be regarded as adulterous by the laws and customs of Western society at the present day.

If a statute provided for the punishment of adultery without definition of the term, this gave rise to a difficulty as to the meaning of the word. In England, (1) the common-law meaning of the word was sex with another's wife, but this was not a common-law offense; (2) as the name of an offense it referred to sex by a married person with one other than the spouse, but that was recognized only in the ecclesiastical court.

In some states, sexual intercourse between two married persons, who are not married to each other, constitutes adultery on the part of both; sexual intercourse between a married person and an unmarried person likewise constitutes adultery on the part of both.

In other states, adultery can be committed only by a married person. Thus, sexual intercourse between two married persons, who are not married to each other, constitutes adultery on the part of both; but if only one party to the sexual intercourse is married, the intercourse constitutes adultery on the part of the married person and fornication on the part of the unmarried person.

In other states, sexual intercourse constitutes adultery only where the woman is the married party. Thus, sexual intercourse between a married woman and a married man other than her spouse or sexual intercourse between a married woman and an unmarried man constitutes adultery on the part of both; but if the woman is unmarried, neither party is guilty of adultery even if the man is married."