Page:Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie.djvu/64

 Rh or nationality impediments to marriage, ensure that marriage is freely entered into and guarantee equal rights before, during and after marriage.

The statement in Article 16(3) of the UDHR that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit in society, entitled to protection by the state, has in itself no inherently definitional implications. Thus, it certainly does not confine itself to the nuclear monogamous family as contemplated by our common law. Nor need it by its nature be restricted intrinsically, inexorably and forever to heterosexual family units. There is nothing in the international law instruments to suggest that the family which is the fundamental unit of society must be constituted according to any particular model. Indeed, even if the purpose of the instruments was expressly to accord protection to a certain type of family formation, this would not have implied that all other modes of establishing families should for all time lack legal protection.

Indeed, rights by their nature will atrophy if they are frozen. As the conditions of humanity alter and as ideas of justice and equity evolve, so do concepts of rights take on new texture and meaning. The horizon of rights is as limitless as the hopes and expectations of humanity. What was regarded by the law as just yesterday is condemned as unjust today. When the Universal Declaration was adopted, colonialism and racial discrimination were seen as natural phenomena, embodied in the laws of the so-called civilised nations, and blessed by as many religious leaders as Rh