Sex for free rent: Why is this so wrong between consenting adults?

If it's not by consent, then it would be a criminal matter of some sort. If, however, it is a clear agreement from the outset between one consenting adult, a landlord, and another consenting adult, the prospective tenant, to give sexual services in return for free rent, then the State has no business in that business transaction between two consenting adults. Indeed, it's a significantly more honest arrangement than... many marriages. The idea of free sex for free rent as the basis for a tenancy between two consenting adults should be perfectly legal in Irish law. The fact that it's sex that's involved gets the puritan shackles going in all sorts of silly people. Consent should trump all.

Plenty of people engage in similarly consensual arrangements - some arrangements like marriage having plenty of cultural dressing upon the economic, sexual and social exchanges underpinning that particular legal contract. And plenty of implicit threat of frequently life-changing impact - e.g. loss of children and family home - in the event of that specific contract being broken. But because of the cultural dressing obscuring that reality, people miss the economic exchange at the heart of marriage (which is, above all else, a legal contract).

No, it's not duress if it's a condition of accommodation at the outset. If sex for free rent is a condition of a contract, the agreement at the outset upon which the accommodation is rented, which is made freely between two consenting adults then it's just a contractual condition. No sex, no accommodation; no accommodation, no sex. Pretty straightforward business exchange there.

"Duress: threats, violence, constraints, or other action used to coerce someone into doing something against their will or better judgement."