I refer to your report Wanita JIM: Use law as last resort against marital rape .

'Sexual intercourse is rape when it is not consensual,' said Suaram coordinator Eric Paulsen. This is saying the obvious. But what is not so obvious is what is consent. Is it to be determined from day-to-day and moment- to-moment depending on the mood of the wife? God forbid it were so.

Consider this scenario:

Wife is in the mood at 6am in the morning but husband is not, in the rush to work for an important meeting. Later at night, he makes overtures to wife. Wife is tired and rebuffs him. He pleads with wife softly and she repeats 'no'.

After repeating 'please' many times, she still says no, but he nevertheless clambers on top of her, and she, sullenly without overt resistance for it might wake up children or the neighbours - resigns and submits to it in protest.

I am sure Dr Harlina Halizah Siraj of Islamic group Jemaah Islah Malaysia would agree that the husband needs to change his mindset and be taught the marital ethics of 'give and take'. But do we send him to jail for marital rape?

Rape is forcing another person into sex without that person's consent. When a woman marries a man, she is deemed to have given blanket consent to sex with husband (without violence). In exchange for this exclusive sexual access, he, on the other hand, promises fidelity or else he will face the consequences of adultery and divorce.

That is the premise of the marriage contract, as we understand it, though, if women groups have their way, the wife is entitled to change her mind, hour by hour, and carried to extreme, to withdraw that consent even in the midst of sexual intercourse.

Sex in marriage is a marital right as much as its accommodation a marital obligation. It is ridiculous to speak of a right that cannot be asserted or an obligation that need not be discharged merely because the mood and inclination is not there at the material time of initiation by the other party.

This bending over backwards to protect woman's rights ignores the potential for mischief on the part of vindictive wives planning to seek revenge on errant husbands suspected of extramarital liaisons or avaricious wives planning to seize more of his assets and properties.

All a manipulative wife has to do is to wait until the time and hour that her husband is at maximum sexual ardour to withdraw her consent, and she would have got him in the exact spot she wants of him to either submit to her financial or other demands or face a police report on marital rape to the ruin of his reputation (even if the accusation cannot be proven eventually).

I take it that the institution of family and marriage deserves protection and serves especially the needs of women and children. Ironically, the criminalisation of marital rape is likely to do more harm than good to this institution and ultimately to the cause of women for two reasons.

Firstly, the very existence of marital rape as an offence, will undermine that feeling of mutual confidence that should subsist in marital relations. (This is precisely the reason why communications between married persons are privileged and generally no spouse can be compelled to give evidence of such communications in court against the other without the latter's consent).

Where is this trust on the husband's side if his wife has the power to invoke marital rape to punish and destroy him?

Secondly, the success of making marital rape an offence will reverse the power relations between men and women to such an extent that no young man of sound mind and reasoning will henceforth so readily take the matrimonial plunge and place himself under the mercy of women.

Marital rape will not only insidiously subvert the trust that ought to underpin the family institution but it also insidiously subvert the very jurisprudence of criminal justice itself.

Now that it is not necessary to prove physical injury as prerequisite for rape, and inevitably the husband's DNA is all over the marital home, how does one prove marital rape other than presume that the wife's accusation is always more likely true than the husband's denial?

We use to hold dear the value that it is better that nine guilty men go free than one innocent man hang. That is why a conviction on criminal charge cannot be obtained unless 'proven beyond reasonable doubt'.

Now in a overzealous redress of the power relations between men and women and protection of the latter, it is proposed that we change the context of rape from the deserted streets or the bush right into the privacy of the marital bedroom in which it is so easy for the wife to allege rape and impossible for the husband to disprove.

And in so doing, we have come to embrace the exact opposite of letting nine innocent husbands hang to ensure that not even a single guilty husband escapes for inflicting sexual force on a woman.

Suhakam's recommendation has also come under attack from Islamic authorities who are the view that there can be no marital rape under Islam. If there is no such thing as marital rape for Muslims, I contend that we cannot have in the Penal Code, applicable for all, an offence of marital rape only for the non-Muslims.

Sure, there may well be some callous bounder of a husband who, whether in a state of intoxication or otherwise, forces himself on his wife and such a wife should rightly be availed to the legal remedies to divorce him, or in the case of violence, the enforcing of the Domestic Violence Act.

The Women's Aid Organisation (WAO) says there are 70 cases a year of wives complaining that their husbands rape them. Have these allegations gone beyond complaints to being proven? Are there reliable estimates or statistics of proven marital rape being so prevalent as to justify such a sea-change in the law and our notion of rape?

Based on anecdotal experience, the commoner complaint of wives seems to be their husbands either have sex with other women or do not have enough sex with them.

Here's then is the rub. Sensible women will not protest against criminalisation of marital rape because it is in women's favour as a group and they think they are too sensible to abuse it.

Younger men lack the sense of outrage because they have not garnered sufficient experience to know that there are not a few women out there who would abuse the law for their own purposes.

And older and experienced men of influence and power (over 50) do not oppose the proposed change of the law because they selfishly think it does not affect them. Theirs is not a problem of forcing their wives but how to meet their legitimate expectation of conjugal duty - with or without Viagra. This group is more likely to protest if the law is changed to make it a punishable offence if they do not make love to their wives at least once a week!

So in the end, no one opposes this move to change the law, a change that flies in the face of common sense and family trust and undermines criminal law bias in favour of the accused.

I urge legislators not to bend over backwards to accommodate the vociferous demands of minority women groups to criminalise marital rape based on western feminist ideology without considering the other important imperatives of preserving marital and family trust, and preventing false complaints.

If there needs to be any change of law, it should be directed at making marital rape an offence only in limited cases where the husbands force themselves upon their wives who, though have not yet been granted a legal separation, have, however, physically separated themselves from where their husbands are staying.

It however remains necessary to ensure that when a wife, by choice, chooses not to be physically separated from her spouse, and to remain as husband and wife under the same roof, she should not, under these circumstances, be entitled to renege on her implied consent and cry rape.

That is the meaning of responsibility for one's own choice to marry and remain married to the man. One can't have the cake and eat it all at the same time.