A Right To Sleep With Ur Wife?

[spathiphyllum]

"A senior judge has said he "cannot think of any more obviously fundamental human right" than the right of a husband to have sex with his wife in a case concerning a woman with learning difficulties."

What an insensitive comment. This may cost him his job.

http://www.pretty52.com/news/news-a-judge-said-a-man-has-a-fundamental-human-right-to-have-sex-with-hi-20190403?source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3IyoVIruC8J7P8Sfoq5Jna-sB5ZJVY5I0puCbucxAKe2ZmgM5L6ANaaEs

But to give a question... Does a man have a fundamental right to sleep with his wife?

[spathiphyllum]

Johnny, No apparently not

[BagPussAA]

In response to Sqad.. a man does not have a right to have sex with his wife. She is a human being with her own rights and, is therefore, entitled to say no to any sexual activity. If a man, even her husband, violates this right it is called rape. He does have the right to take a mistress if he chooses in order to fulfill any sexual needs that he feels are not being met at home, or file for a divorce if he thinks necessary.

[hc4361]

Every man is entitled to have sex with his wife IF she consents.

[hereIam]

^ Agree.

[hereIam]

My 'agree' was to Bag Puss.

[hc4361]

BagPuss, the husband is entitled to take a mistress but then his wife is entitled to divorce him for adultery.
Equally, a man or woman can divorce the spouse for unreasonable behaviour if they refuse to ever have sex.

The judge was addressing a very difficult situation but I cannot see why anybody would want to have sex with somebody who does not know what is happening or is unable to expressly consent or refuse.

[Tilly2]

I'm off to watch Pointless...

[Sqad]

h.c

"BagPuss, the husband is entitled to take a mistress but then his wife is entitled to divorce him for adultery.
Equally, a man or woman can divorce the spouse for unreasonable behaviour if they refuse to ever have sex."

I agree entirely.

[hc4361]

Of course the real question here is

Does a man have the fundamental right to sleep with his wife if she doesn't have the mental capacity to consent?

Followed by, if not how can the law prevent it happening?

[jno]

I think he's wrong, but it's all obiter dicta: he's actually saying the man should be allowed his day in court, which seems fair enough. It might be unwise to appoint the same judge to hear the full case, though.

[retrocop]

I wouldn’t waste my money getting married if I would never consumate the marriage. I am a dinosaur who believes sex is fundamentally a means to procreate.Better to have an open arrangement imo and cut out the vicar. If a woman opts to deny sex that is her right but why marry a man and then make him an adulterer?

[youngmafbog]

I think many are taking it outside the context it was meant.

There is an important part to the statement and that is "and the right of the State to monitor that£. Surely that means that his 'right' only exists within the law.

Then the last bit that says he deserves the right to have it heard.

I can see no real problems as yet.

[hc4361]

retrocop, the question here is, after years of marriage and regular sex can the husband continue to have sex with his wife when has developed dementia and is no longer able to consent?

[woofgang]

Ken tdeterming capacity is not a one shot event....people may have the capacity to make some decisions or not others
https://www.scie.org.uk/mca/introduction/mental-capacity-act-2005-at-a-glance

I have had a re read of this and I think the jusdge made the mistake of missing a word out or the statement was misreported. The word of course is "consensual" and if you put that word in before "sex" it changes the whole meaning of the argument.

As I understand it now, social services are arguing that the woman is not able to consent or not to sex with her husband and therefore he shouldn't have sex with her. He has offered to not have sex with her but the judge (probabaly mindful of the mental capacity act of 2005) has said that he wants to see the issue properly argued out instead of social services being able to simply put down their institutional foot and forbid it. The first point of the Mental Capacity act is that it "presumes capacity" whereas it seems to me that in this case, social services is presuming incapacity.....but as I said we don't know all the facts

[hc4361]

It's an interesting case, woofgang. Assuming the husband is forbidden from having sex with his wife what would happen if she initiated it?
How on earth could such an order be monitored?

It would be very sad if his wife is taken away from him just in case he has sex with her.

[woofgang]

PS I was a bit involved at work, not in making formal assessments of capacity, but in working out how they should apply to the person's everyday life and to the lives of their families.....we would look at what people did/thought/enjoyed before their loss of capacity and how happy they seemed with the actions/provision that was being offered, regardless of whether they were what was safest, "best" or "most normal" I well remember a case of a lady who was very demented and had arthritis. Moving and handling her by the nurses made her cry out but her husband could move her apparently without causing her pain or distress but his techniques were not what we were allowed to use and looked worrying....for instance he would give her a firemans lift to get her from bed to wheelchair and back again. There was a suggestion that she should be removed from his care and placed in a nursing home but what stopped it was the fact that she was happy. She seemed relaxed when she was being moved by him, would reach up to him to co operate and appeared generally to prefer his handling methods to the more correct ones. While I know that people who get pleasure from having sex with people who cannot consent or ward them off, I suspect that in this case its not as nasty as that.

[Calicogirl]

My gut feeling is that this has been somewhat poorly worded and definitely taken out of context.
Clearly a man does not have the right, husband or not, to have sex with a woman if she says no. That's set in stone.
The law states that people must be able to consent to sex, which is what this is about as opposed to someone having sex with a woman who has said no.
Social services claim that she is incapable of consenting, which would mean even if to her husband who doubtless knows her better than any social worker she appeared to be willing and enjoying it, he would have committed an offence.
The judge worded what he meant poorly I think, as Woof identified, and I think he is only seeking to clarify for the couple what is and isn't permissible because of her state of health, to protect them both.

I don't think he's advocating rape at all, in fact quite the reverse.

[JF85]

There is clearly a huge amount of text missing from the judge's statement, which would have been much longer. The case involves a woman with learning difficulties but who has been able to consent to marriage.

Now, however, her mental health has deteriorated, meaning her learning difficulties are possibly irrelevant other than as a reason for social workers to become involved.

While learning difficulties are likely to be lifelong and change little, mental health can change from one day to the next. This, I suspect, is why the matter has come to court in the first place and why the judge has put it off for deeper consideration.

[andy-hughes]

retrocop - // If a woman opts to deny sex that is her right but why marry a man and then make him an adulterer? //

That does any married man a disservice - it presumes that a man has to have sex, and cannot live without it, and if he is unable to receive satisfaction at home, then he must automatically seek it elsewhere.

Sex is not a an act necessary to prolong life, it is possible to live without it!

Plenty of married men can and do live celibate lives because their wives are unable to have sex with them. We are not all as shallow an animalistic as you are painting us.

[andy-hughes]

I would agree that the judge has poorly worded his observations on the case, and in turn his words have been taken out of context to read in a way other than what he may have meant.

It is unlikely to cost him his job.