The Nation - News from May 7, 1987

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, a Democratic presidential candidate, signed into law a measure repealing the state’s 200-year-old ban on cohabitation and declared “it shouldn’t be a crime” for unmarried men and women to live together. The measure eliminates a law first passed in 1784 that considered cohabitation to be “open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior.” The law repealed with Dukakis’ signature originally called for a punishment of standing on the gallows with a noose around the neck, followed by “no less than 39 whip strokes.”