They want their marriage recognised and if they don't get that, they want a declaration that they are entitled to marry each other in Ireland. It's a law case, so reports of it can't but use formal and legalistic language, and perhaps the whole thing comes across as somewhat heavy-duty. But what I remember about that dinner is what fun the two of them were, and that, although we had to go to a serious debate afterwards, we never stopped laughing.

The decision in this case isn't the only important thing about it. The talk that surrounds it matters. Attitudes to it matter. It is one of a series of speakings-out which over the last 20 years or so have challenged the silences that held the old Ireland together. We've heard for the first time from rape victims;

from the children of incestuous homes; from many, many people who were dreadfully abused, both inside and outside institutions, by figures of so-called authority.

Many of these revelations have been about cruelty and suffering, and many of the people concerned can't be called anything but victims. But Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan are not only, as far as I know, not suffering; their lives have been blessed with the very best thing two people can have . . . a long relationship based on wholehearted love and trust. I envy them that. I saw in action, the evening we spent a few hours together . . . and of course I've often seen it in other couples . . .

the truth that two people who empower each other, and who haven't ceased to relish each other, are even more of a pleasure to be with than one happy person. It's not surprising that human beings want to form couples, and want their coupleness to be recognised by others as the central thing it is in their lives.

A more cheerful pair than these two I can't imagine. Yet they are victims, too. And their account of themselves, given in court, does belong with the outpouring of witness from other individuals whose experiences have been excluded from Ireland's account of itself. They all found themselves assumed to be . . . by other people, or by institutions, or by the state itself . . . powerless.

But this couple have used their personal strength, their trained intelligences and their contacts to mount a challenge to the way things are. When they demonstrate to Ireland that homosexual people are as proud and loving, as self-respecting and respectable, as heterosexual people, they allow the question to be formulated . . . why, then, are homosexual people discriminated against? (It's a pity that ordinary, inadequate people with things to hide and dodgy pasts can't be used to mount revolutionary challenges, but they can't, and we have to thank heaven that such paragons of worthiness as Mary Robinson, Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise do exist).

The court action also leads to the truly subversive question . . . what did heterosexual people ever do to deserve favourable treatment from this state? What makes their marriages superior?

The argument that marriage is about having children doesn't hold: lots of straight marriages are not and cannot be about having children and lots of gay marriages are. The argument that marriage is a sacrament doesn't hold: ours is a democracy, not a theocracy. The argument that same-sex marriage will destabilise society doesn't hold; does Canada seem destabilised to you? And as for what human beings do in bed; it may have been in the interests of the old patriarchy to con people into thinking that what the majority of men do or would like to do to women is normal and everything else is not, but the truth is that in the privacy of the bed, there's no such thing as a rule about which ridiculous act is acceptable to society and which is not. The two lovers are society.

I can't help but wonder, when I remember how light-hearted we all were the time we had dinner together, why more value isn't placed on lives that are enjoyed. Why do so many societies go out of their way to be punitive?

Life is so short that you'd think humanity would make every effort to design its laws so as to contribute to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Why shouldn't these two decent women be given the opportunity to institutionalise their happiness? I can't see that anyone or anything would be harmed by their doing so. It's true, I think, that marrying someone is perhaps the most gloriously irrational and optimistic thing most people do in all their lives, but that seems to me a reason to include everyone in the idealism: not to keep categories of people out.

Should the High Court rule in a way that doesn't support this view, I still won't be able to see that to deny human beings, on the basis of the nature of their sexuality, the opportunity of vowing to love, is anything other than gross bigotry. And should the High Court rule in a way that does support me . . . well, I just hope I'm asked to the party.