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| (g) | Gays and lesbians in same-sex life partnerships are ‘as capable as heterosexual spouses of expressing and sharing love in its manifold forms’. They are likewise ‘as capable of forming intimate, permanent, committed, monogamous, loyal and enduring relationships; of furnishing emotional and spiritual support; and of providing physical care, financial support and assistance in running the common household’. They ‘are individually able to adopt children and in the case of lesbians to bear them’. They have in short ‘the same ability to establish a consortium omnis vitae’. Finally, they are ‘capable of constituting a family, whether nuclear or extended, and of establishing, enjoying and benefiting from family life’ in a way that is ‘not distinguishable in any significant respect from that of heterosexual spouses’.[1] | |
| (h) | The decisions of the courts regarding gays and lesbians should be seen as part of the growing acceptance of difference in an increasingly open and pluralistic South Africa that is vital to the society the Constitution contemplates.[2] |
