Say a husband and wife want to engage in conjugal relations. They’re both into it. They’re married. What’s the problem? The well-intended protectors of the faith say “nope, no can do,” and warn the wife that if she has sex with her husband, she’ll be in big trouble.

The couple, who married in 2010, were ordered to abstain from sex until the man had completed a sex education course.

His wife moved into a spare bedroom after being told she would be committing a serious criminal offence if she had sex with her husband.

She also “significantly reduced any physical expressions of affection” so she would not “lead him on,” the Court of Protection heard.

Phew. Crisis averted, all because of the timely intervention of the Court of Protection. No, this is not a made up court, but one that was established in the United Kingdom to save people whom the government deemed unworthy of their own agency from themselves.

The court was created in 2007 under the Mental Capacity Act and has sweeping powers to decide the fate of adults who are judged not to have the mental capacity to make their own decisions. Unlike almost any other court, it is not required to allow the press or members of the public in, to protect those involved. Critics claim the lack of transparency might result in injustice.

A court that rules from the shadows, in secrecy? Well sure, that could be a problem, but then what about protecting the privacy of the incompetents whose lives are being decided by the protective overseers? Are they not entitled to privacy, Winston?

In the case of conjugal denial, the husband had Down Syndrome.

Before the ban, the man, who was not identified, had a healthy sexual relationship with his wife of five years, according to court documents.

The ban came after a psychologist for a local government entity – which was not identified to shield it from criticism – assessed the 38-year-old man and found him to lack the mental competence to willfully engage in conjugal relations, the court documents say.

There seems to be an inexplicable disconnect or two here. For example, if the man, identified in court docs as CH, was so incompetent that he couldn’t consent to sex with his wife, how did it happen that he married? Did he have the capacity to consent to marriage, if not sex with his wife? And then, after enjoying a “healthy sex life” for five years, what part of his comprehending consent was deficient such that continuing to enjoy that sex life would somehow present an issue?

Who cares? A government psychologist put the kibosh on CH’s sex life, threatened his wife with separation from her husband, possibly prison, should she fail to obey the government’s sex-overseer’s commands.

In CH’s case, the government shrink issued the “no sex” order until CH took a sex ed class, which should certainly do the trick if CH was incompetent to consent to sex otherwise. But government, excelling as it does in serving the public, delayed the course for a year. And yet, after taking the course, it still wasn’t good enough for the government.

The man had to take two courses, because a therapist determined that while he made “sufficient progress” after the first one, he had not yet demonstrated an understanding about sexually transmitted diseases.

The case, the court document said, is rare because it pertains to a “settled, monogamous and exclusive married relationship.”

Sure, it seems crazy to deny a wife sex with her husband in a monogamous marriage because he might not appreciate STDs, but one can never be too careful when it comes to really informed consent.

That this escaped from the dark hole of Court of Protection privacy is because CH’s sister raised the problem of the class delays, resulting in a Queens Counsel taking the case, challenging the interference of conjugal relations and seeking damages for the government imposed celibacy.

This isn’t a story from a dystopian Heinlein novel, but the well-intended pearl-clutching fingers of Jolly Old England. Sir Mark Hedley, the judge of the Court of Protection, explained:

Cases that address competence to decide to engage in sex typically involve people seen as vulnerable to being exploited or abused.

“Many would think that no couple should have had to undergo this highly intrusive move upon their personal privacy, yet such a move was in its essentials entirely lawful and properly motivated,” Hedley said.

“As I have said, perhaps it is part of the inevitable price that must be paid to have a regime of effective safeguarding.”

And indeed, it is the inevitable price of a regime of effective safeguarding, which so many teary-eyed survivors would have us embrace here as well. After all, doesn’t the sanctity of consent matter more than the sanctity of marriage?