OPINION:'We fell in love - an intense, involuntary emotional attraction and desire no different for opposite sex or same sex couples . . .', write Ann Louise Gilliganand Katherine Zappone.
OUR LIFE-PARTNERSHIP spans the divide of two centuries. We met in 1981 as two young doctoral students, both arriving at the same time in the unfamiliar town of Boston, one of us from Dublin and the other from Seattle. We came to study education and theology at one of the renowned academic establishments for these disciplines, Boston College.
Katherine had never met an Irish-born person before that day. The first time she heard Ann Louise's soft, sophisticated and melodic voice she felt her soul turn.
Ann Louise often speaks of meeting Katherine as being "surprised by love". Indeed, by the time a couple of months had passed, we had fallen in love. This intense, involuntary emotional attraction and desire is no different for opposite sex or same sex couples.
Attending erudite lectures together during the week kept our focus on the academic raison d'être of our presence in Boston. However, we longed for each weekend when we'd drive to Cape Ann to a small rented cottage and there in the privacy of that space we could express our newfound love.
Opposite sex couples in our programme lived their budding relationships openly and out loud.
We both acknowledged a new intensification of life, a fullness of joy, a heightened sense of meaning and purpose and a discovery of new aspects of ourselves in this relationship. Little by little we knew love in new ways. Already we were imagining together the creative possibilities of a shared life of love.
It was uncanny, here we were, the two of us, from the opposite sides of the world and yet we shared so many values, ideals and concerns in common. There is a rhythm between lovers, a synchronicity, which confirms the truth of this romantic phase of relationship. Against the odds we knew we would manage the miracle of this unexpected gift of love.
We say "against the odds" because in the 20th century there was no way for same sex couples to solemnise, in law, a commitment to faithful love forever. In fact we spent much of our time hiding our love, remaining silent about the greatest gift of our lives.
We could have "come out" like some other very brave people at that time, but we were afraid of the personal and professional consequences. Imagine being filled with fear because of who you are. Hiding part of one's identity is not good for one's bodily, emotional or psychic health. That's what the absence of just law can mean for many same sex couples.
There's an extraordinary power about love, though, it calls one forward beckoning to new choices. A year after we met we gathered a small group of friends to celebrate with us a life-partnership ceremony where we vowed a life of faithful love to each other.
Outside the context of civil law and in the quiet of a home in Rockport, Massachusetts, we found our voice to proclaim a promise of fidelity and life-long cherishing of the other into the future. We promised to share our dreams, our fears, our financial resources, our accomplishments and our failures. We committed ourselves to each other and we discovered unimaginable joy.
A moral theologian we were studying at the time, Margaret Farley, writes eloquently about the essence of such promise-making: "Sometimes we love in a way that makes us yearn to gather up our whole future and place it in affirmation of the one we love." To remain faithful we "cannot, not even in our imagination, play games that will threaten that bond".
Another year later we set off to Dublin, for Ann Louise a returning home and for Katherine a further new beginning. Ireland in the early 1980s was marked by much hardship for many, yet the culture of resisting oppression and striving for liberation was palpable.
The generative creativity of our life-partnership found expression in establishing a socially transformative community education project in west Tallaght, on the outskirts of Dublin. The Shanty, or An Cosán as it is now called 21 years on, has been at the heart of our attempt to eradicate Irish poverty through empowering adult and child-centred education.
Ireland entered the 21st century enjoying a newly found prosperity and a modern, forward-looking, pluralist culture. Though significant progress had been made to decriminalise homosexuality and to cast in law some protections against discriminatory treatment of gay and lesbian people, there was no law that would protect and support our life-long love.
That is the reason we travelled to Canada to marry each other in a civil law ceremony in 2003.
What is the essence of married love? For us, it is not simply about a basket of rights, responsibilities and financial benefits that come in the wake of such a profound life decision. While these are extremely significant, they are not the full sum and substance of marriage.
We married each other because we wanted to bind ourselves in law, as well as in love, to receive societal support for our promise-keeping and the generativity that flows from it. We married each other because in that one act we were able to exercise our human freedom for the single most important choice of our lives.
No one will ever know the psychic wellbeing that accrues when oppression and prejudice lift. This is why we are taking a court case, for ourselves, as well as for others. This is why we hope that Irish lawmakers will make law for the 21st century.
Drs Ann Louise Gilligan and Katherine Zappone's memoirs, Our Lives Out Loud: In Pursuit of Justice and Equality, will be published this autumn by the O'Brien Press. Prof Margaret Farley will speak on Just Love tomorrow in Trinity College Dublin at 7.30pm