Many people would agree with Torben Vegener Hansen's views on sex: "It makes me feel good. It makes me more dynamic. Having sex is as important as food."
But it is his insistence that sex is "a human right" that has led him into a legal battle with his government.
Vegener Hansen, 59, who has cerebral palsy, is fighting to force the Danish state to subsidize visits to his home by prostitutes in the same way they would pay for a meals-on-wheels service.
"Denmark's social law provides for me to be compensated for the expenses I incur because of my handicap," he said. "It should therefore cover my right to a sex life."
Vegener Hansen, a former social worker, lives alone in an adapted one-bedroom flat. He travels about Aarhus city center using an electric wheelchair. The local council pays for him to receive 37 hours' practical help every week. His speech is impaired but he uses the phone and Internet.
"I need to have sex to feel like a normal human being," he says over coffee and biscuits. "I have a girlfriend at the moment so I do not need to see prostitutes. But if I didn't have Vivia I would want sex at least twice a month."
Because prostitution is legal in Denmark, Vegener Hansen argues his local authority unfairly made a moral judgment when it rejected his application for financial support to bring prostitutes to his flat.
Since 2001, Denmark's social service guidelines on disability have stipulated that care staff in institutions must be prepared to help disabled people obtain sex. That includes accompanying them to a prostitute.
Arranging sex is part of the job for staff at the Hulegaarden residential home for mental disability near Copenhagen. Its director, Lars Nielsen, said: "We have many hours of discussion, in groups, before actually doing so. It is clear that there is no human being who is not also a sexual being. If we do not allow disabled people to have the experience of sex, we cannot expect them to build up their lives."
But Nielsen is uncomfortable about Vegener Hansen's campaign because it affects two marginalized groups, prostitutes and disabled people.
Vegener Hansen's 46-year-old girlfriend Vivia, who does not want to reveal her surname, opposes him.
"I think it is important that the sex lives of disabled people be discussed," she said. "But I am against all forms of prostitution and think that, sometimes, you have to accept your destiny."
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of £0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan