What the critics of the ‘right to sex’ judge got wrong

There’s a terrifically sensitive, not to say odd, hearing underway this week in which social services are seeking to prevent a man from having sex with his wife. The couple have been married for more than 20 years but her deteriorating mental health means that social services aren’t confident that she’s able to give informed consent to sex so they’ve asked a judge to consider an order barring her husband from engaging in intercourse, which seems like an extraordinary incursion by the state into a couple’s private life.

But it’s not the propriety of this involvement that’s getting feminists worked up. Mr Justice Hayden who is hearing the case observed: ‘I cannot think of any more obviously fundamental human right than the right of a man to have sex with his wife,’ he said. ‘I think he is entitled to have it properly argued.’

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The Rotherham cover-up

Sort of common sense, you’d think, in the circumstances.