Fornication is generally immoral sexual intercourse between two people not married to each other. When one or more of the partners having consensual sexual intercourse is married to another person, it is called adultery. John Calvin viewed adultery to be any sexual act that is outside the divine model for sexual intercourse, which includes fornication.
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.
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).
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. 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. Where one translation may use fornication another translation may use whoredom, sexual immorality (e.g., ) or more simply immoral or immorality.
In Latin, the term fornix means arch or vault. In ancient Rome, prostitutes waited for their customers out of the rain under vaulted ceilings, and fornix became a euphemism for brothels, and the Latin verb fornicare referred to a man visiting a brothel. The first recorded use in English is in the Cursor Mundi, ; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records a figurative use as well: "The forsaking of God for idols". 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."
Across history, cultures, and laws
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."
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.
Great Britain
In the 1170s, "it was common practice for ordinary couples to cohabit before marriage and for cousins to marry one another" and there was very little stigma around bastards at any social level in medieval England. 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. The Waldensians were a medieval sect accused of fornication and of not regarding it a sin.
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. 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.
Prior to the passing of the Marriage Act 1753, laws against bastard children became more strict during the 1730s and 1740s.