UK Straight Couple Applies for Civil Partnership

Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle hope to make history on Tuesday by becoming the first straight couple to apply for a civil partnership in the United Kingdom.

The pair expect to be turned down by the registrar due to the ban on opposite-sex civil partnerships, but they plan on appealing the refusal.

"If necessary, we are ready to take our appeal all the way to the European Court of Human Rights," said Freeman and Doyle in a press release.

"Because we feel alienated from the patriarchal traditions of marriage, we would prefer to have a civil partnership. As a mixed-sex couple, we are banned by law from doing so," explained Doyle in the couple's statement. "By filing an application for civil partnership, we are seeking to challenge this discriminatory law.

The two 25 years-old civil servants also decided to apply for a civil partnership because of their disdain for the ban on marriage for same-sex couples.

"Our decision is also motivated by the fact that we object to the way same-sex couples are prohibited from getting married. If we got married we would be colluding with the segregation that exists in matrimonial law between gay civil partnerships and straight civil marriage," added Doyle.

Currently under U.K. law, same-sex couples are banned from civil marriage and heterosexual couples are banned from civil partnerships.