A woman, who was blamed by French courts for her divorce because she no longer had sex with her husband, has won an appeal in Europe’s top human rights court, the court said on Thursday, reigniting a debate in France over women’s rights.
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[Lawyer, Lilia Mhissen] “This decision marks the abolition of the marital duty and the archaic, canonical vision of the family,” she said in a statement. “Courts will finally stop interpreting French law through the lens of canon law and imposing on women the obligation to have sexual relations within marriage.”
That’s interesting, I thought there already were judgments in this direction.
For more details, french law has an article that says spouses mutually compel to live in partnership. (don’t know how to translate it best, “les époux s’obligent mutuellement à une communauté de vie”). This is a very unclear sentence, which has been considered by judges to imply that it requires spouses to live under the same roof and to have sex. I think i remember hearing of a ruling stating that in the case of a lesbian lady and an asexual man that got together to have a social facade and live their sexual lives separately, they still were “living in partnership” and that the absence of sex could not cancel their union, but maybe it was only stated once.
That was one part that disgusted me a lot when learning about french law, glad it’s changing for the better, hope it will change faster.