Judging from two news stories I found today, the answer depends a lot on where one happens to live:

Islamic Militants Stone Man To Death For Adultery In Somalia As Villagers Are Forced To Watch (The Daily Mail; Dec 14)

This barbaric scene belongs in the Dark Ages, but pictures emerged today of a group of Islamic militants who forced villagers to watch as they stoned a man to death for adultery.

Mohamed Abukar Ibrahim, a 48-year-old, was buried in a hole up to his chest and pelted with rocks until he died….

The executions took place yesterday in Afgoye, some 20 miles south-west of the capital of Mogadishu.

Hizbul Islam fighters ordered hundreds of residents to a field, where a rebel judge announced that the two men had confessed to murder and adultery….

‘This is their day of justice,’ the judge, Osman Siidow Hasan, told the crowd. ‘We investigated and they confessed.’…

The executions were the first time that Hizbul Islam guerillas had dealt out the type of punishments usually associated with the more hardline al Shabaab rebel group in Somalia. [For two recent examples, see the Nov 6 BBC story headlined Somali Adulterer Stoned To Death and the Nov 18 BBC story headlined Somali Woman Stoned For Adultery]….

Al Shabaab, and to a lesser extent Hizbul Islam, are fighting the government to impose their harsh interpretation of Islamic Sharia law across the drought-ravaged country.

Al Shabaab clerics have banned movies, dancing at weddings and playing or watching soccer in the areas under their control, as well as carrying out executions and amputations….

Removing The Noose Around Neck Of Adulterers (The Toronto Star; Dec 14)

New Hampshire moves to repeal 200-year-old law on marital infidelity and its $1,200 fine

CONCORD, New Hampshire: The original punishments – including standing on the gallows for an hour with a noose around the neck – have been softened to a $1,200 fine, yet some lawmakers think it’s time for the 200-year-old crime of adultery to come off New Hampshire’s books.

Seven months after the state approved gay marriage, legislators will consider easing government further from the bedroom with a bill to repeal the adultery law.

“We shouldn’t be regulating people’s sex lives and their love lives,” state Representative Timothy Horrigan said.

“This is one area the state government should stay out of people’s bedrooms.”

Horrigan, a Democrat, and state Representative Carol McGuire, a Republican, have teamed up on legislation to repeal the law.

Horrigan signed on because he believes it continues New Hampshire’s efforts toward marriage equality. In June, lawmakers voted to legalize gay marriage – a law that takes effect Jan. 1.

“We shouldn’t be in the business of regulating what consenting adults do with each other,” Horrigan said.

Convicted adulterers years ago faced standing on the gallows, up to 39 lashes or a year in jail. The punishment has been relaxed to a misdemeanour and a fine of up to $1,200 – with no jail time.

Jeff Atkinson, a professor at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, says states rarely – if ever – enforce criminal adultery laws.

Atkinson attributes that to a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas. In its decision, the high court found that the state had no legitimate interest justifying its intrusion into the personal and private lives of two gay men arrested in their bedroom during a police investigation in a weapons case. The men had been charged with sodomy.

Atkinson said the case applies to adultery because both involve private sexual conduct.

Some recently questioned whether South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s admitted extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina made him subject to his state’s 1880 criminal law against adultery. The penalty is a fine of up to $500 and a year in jail.

The state said it couldn’t waste limited money trying to prosecute Sanford on such a charge. The law’s constitutionality also has been questioned.

The last attempts to repeal New Hampshire’s law came after a Merrimack husband filed a complaint against his wife and her boss in 1987. When police refused to pursue adultery charges, Robert Stackelback brought the complaint himself against the pair. He later dropped the charges.

That prompted repeal efforts in 1987 and 1989. Both times the House voted for repeal, but the Senate did not. An attempt in 1992 to reduce the penalty to a violation also passed the House but died in the Senate.

House Criminal Justice and Public Safety chairman Stephen Shurtleff’s committee will hear the latest bill, probably next month.

Shurtleff, a Democrat, predicts – barring a compelling reason to keep the law – his committee will support repealing the law since it isn’t being enforced.

In the past, conservatives argued decriminalizing adultery would weaken marriage.

Once again we seem to have two groups of people who have been raised in two heavily religious cultures providing two very different answers to the same basic question.

Do you think Somalia’s answer or New Hampshire’s answer is the more moral or ethical one?

Do you think Somalia’s answer or New Hampshire’s answer best reflects the “absolute morality” allegedly put forth in the Bible?