Page:Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie.djvu/2

 Rh 

 SACHS J

INTRODUCTION

Finding themselves strongly attracted to each other, two people went out regularly and eventually decided to set up home together. After being acknowledged by their friends as a couple for more than a decade, they decided that the time had come to get public recognition and registration of their relationship, and formally to embrace the rights and responsibilities they felt should flow from and attach to it. Like many persons in their situation, they wanted to get married. There was one impediment. They are both women.

Ms Marié Adriaana Fourie and Ms Cecelia Johanna Bonthuys are the applicants in the first of two cases that were set down for hearing on the same day in this Court. Their complaint has been that the law excludes them from publicly celebrating their love and commitment to each other in marriage. Far from enabling them to regularise their union, it shuts them out, unfairly and unconstitutionally, they claim. 

Rh