Fri 14 July - Adultery: or is it?

"I see on the message board that someone has queried the use of IVF as a possible form of adultery.

"In response another person has denied this, as in his opinion adultery is the physical act of sexual intercourse between two married persons.

"I think a little exploration into the matter is called for.

"In the matter of marriage there has always been an adherence to the part of the marriage vow taken by both parties that they should forsake all others and be true to each other ('til death do us part).

"Now that came about for one or two rather simple reasons, one being the dangers of an adulterous relationship providing a man with the offspring of someone other than himself. This could be a neighbour, a passing tinker, the milkman or even the husband's own kith or kin, brother, father nephew and so on.

"This in turn leading on to assault of both the cuckolding wife, the cuckold himself and potentially to murder of the woman, the child born or unborn, and the male in the event.

"In turn this could become a deeper problem in respect of a vendetta or ongoing feud that could involve families spanning many generations.

"The church had witnessed this sort of behaviour amongst families across Europe and Britain for centuries, and came down hard on the whole concept of extra-marital activity.

"Consequently the matter was written into the legal system and came out as one of the most serious reasons for divorce when that became available, as the power of the Romaan Catholic church was taken away by Henry VIII, so that monarch instituted divorce for his own purposes.

"However many aspects of the laws that governed marriage remainjed in place, so we came to modern times with these parts of the marriage vows intact.

"In the more recent past, although divorce has besome more readily available to the masses, and the legal costs have dropped dramatically, so the numbers taking up the option to break a marriage have increased.

"But, at the bottom line, the laws on adultery have really not changed, that is, if you commit an act of sexual intercourse with a person you are not married to, you have committed adultery.

"Now let us look at the second part of the reasons for adultery - property.

"In every marriage contract, and marriage IS a legal and binding contract, both parties come to the marriage with certain property rights. One of those rights emcompasses the matter of issue, children that is. A man and a woman have the right to expact they will produce, from their own biological wherewithall, a child or children whilst in that marriage.

"With the availability of methods today of a technological capability, parents who together are found to be unable to produce, from their own bodies, a child, have the legal redress to engage a variety of methods to so produce. These include AID, AIH, IVF, egg donation, surrogacy, and others.

"Legally and technologically they have committed no sin, but by not too distant a stretch of the imagination, the religious and traditional would not accept that this is so, and would still argue that adultery had taken place.

"The sexual act does not enter into it, as there is an issue for which either the mother or the father was not biologically responsible.

"Therefore, although the child is a matter of fact, the parentage is debatable, a situation that the church has no answer to, a provison that has never arisen prior to about thirty odd years ago.

"So, as a child has been produced without the physical input of either of the parents, or even both in the case of donated sperm and egg, and the church is so far behind the times, in eccesiatsical terms there has been adultery taking place.

"Nit picking the argument may well be, but until the church alters it's stance on the whole adultery outlook, there we shall stay. Legally not adultery, religiously adultery."

Note - Morgan's views are not necessarily shared by the BBC