A COUPLE sit having a romantic meal on holidays one night in Montreal. A man approaches their table and asks, "Can I join you?

You're obviously alone." But they weren't. "No, actually, we're together, " one of the women tells him and they watch as he backs away from the table, stunned.

They met, and fell in love, in Boston in 1981.

As the only two doctoral candidates accepted into Boston College that year, Dr Ann-Louise Gilligan and Dr Katherine Zappone formed an immediate bond. One year into their relationship, they knew it was for keeps and committed to becoming life partners at a ceremony in Massachusetts. "We vowed our lives to one another. You could say we've been engaged ever since, " says Zappone. Studies completed two years later, Gilligan returned to her job as a philosophy of education lecturer at St Patrick's College in Drumcondra, Dublin, with Zappone in tow.

The couple officially tied the knot in a civil ceremony in Vancouver in 2003, after Gilligan proposed to Zappone on a beach in Waterville, Kerry, near their holiday home. Canada was one of the only countries where same-sex couples need not be citizens or residents in order to wed. They didn't bother with engagement rings . . . instead they both wear life-partnership rings, wedding bands and each other's birthstone rings.

Sitting in An Cosan, a community education centre they founded in Jobstown, west Tallaght, Zappone proudly goes through their wedding album. "Apart from the fact that we're two women, this was a typical wedding where two families got together. There they are getting us ready for the event, like any family would. That's my brother doing my nails."

After a brief honeymoon in Zappone's native Seattle, the couple returned to their home in Brittas, Co Dublin. But over the following months and subsequent three-and-ahalf years, traditionally a private period of matrimonial bliss for newlyweds, their marriage instead stirred a very public debate. As a married couple, they saw no reason to be exempt from the same tax allowances as wedded heterosexual couples. So they made a claim stating just that to the Revenue Commissioners, which it rejected on 1 July 2004 under the Taxes Consolidation Acts.

So began Gilligan and Zappone's High Court action against the revenue, the state and the Attorney General, claiming discrimination on grounds of gender and/or sexual orientation.

But their case was about much more than taxrelief entitlements. "It's always been about recognition of our love, " says Gilligan. "We're not looking to change marriage, we're just looking to have our marriage recognised."

The fight goes on Following eight days in court and a glaring media spotlight, the couple lost. But it's by no means game over. An appeal to the Supreme Court has already been lodged challenging the court's ruling that their marriage could not be recognised as the right to marry here is confined under the constitution to the union of a man and woman.

Taking the initial step of seeking legal recognition of their marriage was no easy decision, but one the women felt compelled to pursue. Their work with An Cosan reflects their life-long commitment to challenging injustice. Its origins date back to the '80s when they opened up their sittingroom as an education centre for disadvantaged women before it expanded to such an extent that it now encompasses a childhood education centre as well as a facility for a range of courses for men and women. But this time, they are challenging a personal inequality.

"The appeal was an immediate decision without pause or hesitation. We eventually came to the point of saying: 'We're two people who have lived a committed and devoted life, why should we accept this?' It's like the dark ages, " says Gilligan.

"Our work is value-based. Our values are love, community and freedom from any form of oppression. That's what's inspired our work and it's the way we live our lives, " says Zappone, who works as a public policy research consultant.

Their lives are busier than most. They regularly put in 12 hours at the office, with Zappone marginally ahead of her partner in the workaholic stakes. They've considered adopting children in the past (although legally they would have to pursue any adoption individually, not as a couple) but work commitments have always held them back. They consider themselves fortunate to have been blessed by close relationships with some of their friends' kids.

It may take two years before their appeal is heard at the Supreme Court. But having initiated proceedings since they wed in 2003, they can handle the wait. "We've lived faithfully as life partners. It's not good enough to say that homosexuals are fine, gay men and lesbian women can even live next door, " says Gilligan, "so long as it's not part of public policy and legally they are not given full rights. At this stage, everyone seems to get a bit nervous and I really need to know why. Our love hasn't indented the common good. It hasn't added any depravity to this society. So what are people's fears?"

The couple maintain that the Catholic church has stoked the fire of intolerance towards homosexuals, which is of particular concern to them considering its role in education here. The year they wed, future pontiff Joseph Ratzinger published a document outlining his views on homosexuality. It stated that gay people must be "tolerated" but "toleration of this evil is far different to approval or legislation of evil."

"Ratzinger is basically saying we have to be tolerant of homosexual persons but homosexual acts are deviant and evil, " says Gilligan, reading from the pope's document. "The church is by and large controlling our school system. It sends an absolutely contradictory message that it's okay to be gay but you can't actually practise. If all of that lingers in the air, how can young people who experience themselves as gay have a positive growth into their identity?"

Breaking through prejudice Their fight for legal recognition of their marriage is as much a battle on behalf of the gay community as it is about challenging society's prejudices as a whole, particularly young people's. Walking behind some college students recently (emerging from the Ivy League gates of Trinity College Dublin, no less), Gilligan was taken aback to hear a couple of young students describe something as 'gay' in a derogatory sense. Of course, she'd heard it used as a negative term before but didn't expect it to form part of the vocabulary of young adults.

"It's prejudice and fear and it's still very much present. I think one of the best ways to push through that prejudice is to legislate publicly.

We are normal. We are not better than or less than, we're simply different in the way we're sexual and the way we love. Why the majority who are heterosexual should dictate to the minority who are homosexual what's good, bad or indifferent about sexual love baffles me, quite truthfully."

But change is imminent. The introduction of civil partnership for heterosexual and homosexual couples was put firmly on the political agenda when Tanaiste Michael McDowell last May promised some form of legal recognition for co-habiting couples, including same-sex couples, for tax, pension and inheritance purposes. McDowell established a Working Group on Domestic Partnership to consider the various legal options available to the legislature, which will make recommendations to government.

In essence, civil partnership is just one step shy of marriage. Zappone and Gilligan's views on this echo the sentiments of the gay community as a whole . . . it must go further and offer full equality to all couples. At the moment, there are no rights for the estimated 77,000 co-habiting couples in the state. "If I died at this moment, my pension that I've paid into college for 30 years would not go to Katherine."

'We should win, and will win' So far, they have been fighting a losing battle.

A week after they lost their High Court bid, they received the news that the state would not pay their legal costs, estimated in the tens of thousands. "The state ruled that it did not acknowledge that our case was taken in the public interest, " Zappone explains. "It was a double loss."

It's now a case of fingers crossed for third time lucky at the Supreme Court. "There's no rational reason why we should not have won, " says Gilligan. "If we claim that full human rights are entitled to all, then obviously we should win, and will win."

Throughout the long and tedious legal process, the pair have remained decidedly upbeat. Newspaper photos of them coming out of the High Court after it ruled against them depict their smiling, happy faces. "That's really because of the overwhelming support we've had, " says Zappone. "We remain perplexed how we can get such a positive response from people from so many different walks of life and why we haven't ultimately had access to justice that we seek in the courts."

For them, it all comes down to a desire for equality and challenging of attitudes. But they define it in much simpler, personal terms too:

"It all comes down to love."