Ex-GCN staff member, Grainne Close and her civil partner, Shannon Sickles, and Chris and Henry Flanagan-Kane were the first couples to avail of civil partnership legislation in Northern Ireland 12 years ago.

In August of this year Mr Justice O’Hara, dismissed a High Court case taken by both couples against Stormont’s Department of Finance and Personnel, which regulates the region’s marriage laws, on the grounds that the ban contravenes entitlements to marriage and a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Making his judgement at the time, the Judge said: “To the frustration of supporters of same-sex marriage the [Northern Ireland] Assembly has not yet passed into law any measure to recognise and introduce same-sex marriage.

“It is not at all difficult to understand how gay men and lesbians who have suffered discrimination, rejection and exclusion feel so strongly about the maintenance in Northern Ireland of the barrier to same sex marriage. However, the judgment which I have to reach is not based on social policy but on the law.”

According to Irish News, the couples have secured new pro bono legal representaiton from human rights firm KRW Law. Their costs will also be covered by a crowd justice funding drive, should they lose this round of the legal challenge.

According the couples’ solicitor Darragh Mackin, they will be advancing the argument that in every state where civil partnership has been brought in – including the rest of the UK – it has been followed with the introduction of same-sex marriage.

Another key point for the couples, who both have children, is what the legal team will argue is the “quasi-discriminatory label”.

“We are straight away being pointed out as being gay when your child has to say `My daddy’s in a civil partnership’, rather than `My daddy’s in a marriage’,” Chris Flanagan Kane told Irish News.

“Even when you’re filling in school forms, there’s just no box for you. There’s `married’ or `single’ but there is nothing for civil partnership.

“And other application forms, if you put down civil partnership you are labelling yourself as gay and that is putting us at risk of discrimination.”