Model Ma Yanli, rumored to have been a mistress of the former Party secretary of Shanghai
Guangdong's legislature is currently considering a draft law that would prohibit mistresses, known as "er nai". Tucked within a bill called "Women's Rights Protection Law," the provisions would prohibit married people from "building love nests" and from "cohabiting" with non-spouses. The draft law would also (a) prohibit non-spouses "with full awareness" of the marriage from (b) using means other than cohabiting with a spouse to (c) jeopardize marital family relations. Violations of the law could incur administrative penalties, as well as investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing.
Guangdong legislator Cheng Jingchu described the draft law as "defending and promoting the stability of married peoples' households," and news reports characterize such stability as "one of the most basic rights women should receive." Marriage apparently has been under assault from "new problems" like "keeping mistresses," which negatively affect "societal harmony," and the draft law is supposed to safeguard nothing less than "monogamy."
Whatever else the draft law may be intended to protect, it's plainly also a law enforcement tool against corrupt officials. CCTV.com raised this issue explicitly, pointing out that before Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu and Beijing vice mayor Liu Zhihua were ousted, their "behind the scenes" mistresses were yanked into the limelight. But in this and other respects, the draft law is poorly written.
First, it's too broad, applying not only to government officials, but to "people with spouses," and prohibiting not merely corruption but "jeopardizing marital family relations." Laws with this breadth and vagueness carry the dangerous potential for selective enforcement. In the U.S., for example, the White Slavery Traffic Act (better known as the Mann Act) — which prohibited transporting a woman across state lines for "immoral purpose[s]" — was famously enforced against blacks like boxer Jack Johnson and musician Chuck Berry (both of whom were traveling with women who weren't black) and lefties like Charlie Chaplin (against whom FBI director J. Edgar Hoover held a grudge).
Second, in general, the law doesn't belong in the bedroom. Morality — and sexual morality in particular — is a matter of conscience, identity and individual choice. The potential for harm arising from such choices is likely to be of a predominantly personal nature. And such laws are impractical: they can't be enforced, and they're invariably ignored. At different times in the United States, everything from interracial marriage, to the use of contraception in marriage, to sodomy has been outlawed, all to no avail: people do it anyway.
People in China (and around the world) have been enjoying extra-marital sex since time immemorial. Outlawing such common, long-standing behavior is like outlawing human nature — it's preposterous and, as such, undermines the authority of the law. And if Guangdong's draft law is to have any hope of usefulness in the fight against government corruption, further weakening of legal authority seems exactly the wrong way to proceed.
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Posted
Jun 01 2007, 06:08 AM
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Danwei - Media, Advertising, and Urban Life in China