It's a safe bet that Hester Prynne and Suzanne Corona don't have very much in common.

Except, now, criminal charges of adultery.

Both in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel of Puritan-era New England and in Batavia — where the

41-year-old wife was caught 12 days ago messing around with a younger man on a park picnic

table while her husband was elsewhere — women have been charged publicly with violating the

bounds of their marriages.

Adultery.

For Prynne, it was the "scarlet letter" — the red "A" — she was forced to wear on the front

of her dress.

For Corona, it's a misdemeanor charge that could mean up to 90 days in jail or a fine of up

to $500 — one that she has said she will fight in court.

For observers, meanwhile, the whole drama — which has been closely followed in Western New

York and was picked up by news organizations across the United States and abroad — boils down

to a few simple questions:

Why is adultery against the law in New York State? Should that change?

And, taking a larger view, in a celebrity-obsessed culture in which sexual peccadilloes

regularly bring down the marriages of political and Hollywood types, do we even care anymore

when people step outside the bounds of their wedding vows?

The answer to that last question is yes, according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a leading

national voice on marriage and author of "The Divorce Culture: Rethinking Our Commitments to

Marriage and Family."

Despite the Hollywood and entertainment culture we seem to be steeped in, most Americans believe that adultery is wrong, Whitehead said.

"It's kind of surprising," Whitehead said, "because in every other way, we're much more

tolerant of sexual behavior. All the other rules have been relaxed. But ... our ideal of

marriage — and I'm underlining 'ideal' — is that both men and women have to be faithful."

New numbers bear that out. A Gallup poll conducted in May on American values found that 92

percent of people think that extramarital affairs are "morally wrong." Only 6 percent called

adultery "morally acceptable."

"Adultery is seen in this country as a serious offense," said Whitehead, a conservative

thinker who in 1993 created a stir with an anti-divorce article in the Atlantic magazine

titled "Dan Quayle Was Right."

Meanwhile, the Batavia case has also focused attention on a little-known facet of New York

State law: the century-old adultery statute.

The law has been employed only about a dozen times in the last 40 years.

First put into place as a misdemeanor crime in 1907, the statute states: "A person is

guilty of adultery when he engages in sexual intercourse with another person at a time when he

has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse."

Penalties for the Class B crime include up to 90 days in jail and up to $500 in fines.

While adultery still does sometimes factor into civil law, in divorce proceedings, it has,

as a criminal charge, almost wholly faded from use over time, according to matrimonial and

criminal lawyers in Western New York.

"My immediate thought [on hearing of the Corona case] was, "Geez, you never see this,'"

said Daniel J. Sperrazza, an attorney who handles matrimonial cases from his Olympic Towers

practice. "When I heard somebody was being charged criminally with it ... the criminal charge of

adultery is used even less. You just never see it."

"Partly," Sperrazza said, "it's because no one even knows that it's there."

So why keep it around?

Over the decades, there have been several attempts to strike the law from New York's books,

but each time, there wasn't enough support to overturn it.

Today, New York maintains its adultery law, along with as many as two dozen other states ...

and it doesn't look as if any of these existing, if little-used, statutes will be cast into

history's dustbin anytime soon.

In New Hampshire, in fact, a 200-year-old law forbidding adultery — which once mandated

that the adulterer stand on a gallows wearing a noose around his or her neck — was upheld as

recently as this April, when state lawmakers voted down a measure that would have revoked the

law.

Attorney Terrence M. Connors, of Connors & Vilardo in the Liberty Building, said that the flutter of interest about the antique-seeming adultery charge in the Corona case reminded him of work earlier in his career in which he and others fought the state's "blue laws," which forbade stores and businesses to be open on Sundays.

"It was the same type of analogy. We brought a challenge to the blue laws, saying it's

ridiculous to have a law on the books that says you can't have a store open on Sunday,"

Connors said.

A few laws such as that one, and the adultery statute, have "been around forever," Connors

said.

And until state lawmakers take up the issue, he said, that's the way things will remain.

Meantime, for Batavia wife Corona, the outcome of the case — she also faces a

public-lewdness charge — is still very much up in the air.

She and Justin M. Amend, 29, of Oakfield, were charged by a city police officer who saw

them engaged in sexual activity on a picnic table June 4 in Batavia's Farrall Park and who

knew that Corona is married.

Corona said she will hire an attorney, and she is due back in Batavia court later this

month.

Amend also faces a public-lewdness charge. He was not charged with adultery, however,

because he is not married and told police he was not aware of Corona's marital status.