I misinterpreted your wife beating analogy.
I am not advocating increasing the value of marriage by use of the death penalty.
And you can also according to your own reasonings say you can not increase the value of human life by imposing a death penalty on the murderer. So why make murder a capital offense?
The point is that if you transgress what is highly valued in a soceity you will incur the death penalty.
That’s why liberals are against murder being a capital offense b/c they do not value human life. Murder may be tragic to liberals but “what the hey”, to them human life is a commodity- valueless and it may have subjective value to some but objectively no real value.
That’s the reasoning of those who are against Adultery being a capital crime, it’s tragic but objectively no big deal.
That’s why jay-walking is not a capital offense, it may be a violation of regulating traffic but objectively no big deal.
To most their reasoning goes like this:
Marriage is a good way of regulating soceity b/c usually a family results, but if adultery takes place - no big deal- b/c marriage, like jay-walking, is a regulative device, if it ‘s transgressed - who cares, marriage may have subjective value to some but intrinsically/objectively marriage has no “real” value in itself.
I understand your points and would like to respond more thoroughly but it is very late at night at my end of the world.
However, in summary I’d say that is why the process of law i.e. arriving at the final verdict for a crime is just as important if not more important than the verdict itself.