Outdated Marital obligations in France

[Doloresparton]

In a country where a group of women are Elles but become Ils if just one man joins them this doesn’t surprise me.

www.france24.com/en/europe/20250126-marriage-no-longer-sexual-servitude-european-court-human-condemns-france-marital-duty-echr

Let me try to make a bit of a contrarian case:

Laws should encode 'reasonable expectations' that humans have of each other in society. Those expectations shift over time.

Is it a reasonable expectation that a marriage includes somewhat regular sex?

The modern equivalent of the Clapham omnibus (ie the normal person's reasonable expectation) might be something like the MN AIBU boards. Where living in a sexless relationship against one's will is widely considered grounds for splitting up. That's not seen as an old-fashioned view on AIBU.

I wouldn't have drafted France's laws like that, but it's not based on archaic mores and (as far as I can tell from Google) not asymmetrical. It's just AIBU but codified.

(Not to be confused with permitting of marital rape, illegal in France since 1994).