RAMBLINGS OF THE UNMARRIED

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BY GORDON GUILLERGAN
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Concubinage

Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers. – Hebrews 13:4

QUERIDA. Mistress. Kabit. Society has penned quite a number of tags for mistresses but for some reason we have not really heard of mistresses being penalized for such. Our laws tend to be gender-biased. Most legal minds would say concubinage is quite difficult to prove under our laws.

Article 334 of the Revised Penal Code states concubinage is committed by a married man who shall keep a mistress in the conjugal dwelling, or shall have sexual intercourse with a woman not his wife under scandalous circumstances or shall cohabit with her in any other place.

But what is “conjugal dwelling”?

Conjugal dwelling is the home of the husband and wife even if the wife happens to be temporarily absent on any account. Therefore, concubinage is the act of the husband keeping another woman in their household for sex, aside from his wife.

What is “scandalous circumstances”?

The scandal spoken of in Article 334 consists in any guilty word or deed that offends public conscience, redounds to the detriment of the feelings of honest persons, and gives occasion to the neighbor’s spiritual damage or ruin.

On the other hand, to “cohabit” is to dwell together, in the manner of husband and wife, for some period of time, as distinguished from occasional transient interviews for unlawful intercourse. This was well established in jurisprudence (People vs Pitoc, G.R. No. 18513, 18 September, 1922) as the dwelling together as husband and wife, or in sexual intercourse, and comprising a continued period of time. Hence the offense is not a single act of adultery; it is cohabiting in a state of adultery; and it may be a week, a month, a year, or longer.

To full establish concubinage, the case must be based on those three elements that are quite difficult to establish. Continuous cohabitation is required for a certain period. The failure to establish the same may weaken the prosecution.

But that is in the concept of the law. In the concept of our society, quite often we glorify men with many girls. We see this as a medal of honor, a sign of manliness but never a sign of disrespect to the wife and God.

What God has put together let no man put apart. At night when you, think what kind of man do you want your children to perceive you as – society’s heartthrob or one who in God’s and your family’s eyes is a man who honors his word, loves and protects his wife through richer or poorer, through sickness and in health, and till death./PN
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