Page:Fourie v Minister of Home Affairs (SCA).djvu/13

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These propositions point our way. At issue is access to an institution that all agree is vital to society and central to social life and human relationships. More than this, marriage and the capacity to get married remain central to our elf-definition as humans. As Madala J has pointed out, not everyone may choose to get married: but heterosexual couples have the choice. The capacity to choose to get married enhances the liberty, the autonomy and the dignity of a couple committed for life to each other. It offers them the option of entering an honourable and profound estate that is adorned with legal and social recognition, rewarded with many privileges and secured by many automatic obligations. It offers a social and legal shrine for love and for commitment and for a future shared with another human being to the exclusion of all others.

The current common law definition of marriage deprives committed same-sex couples of this choice. In this our