Dear friends and supporters, We wanted to let you know that we’re about to take the next step in our legal challenge to open civil partnerships to all, regardless of sexual orientation. We will be issuing our judicial review claim, which includes our witness statements and the “grounds of challenge” (sorry for the legal jargon!) at the High Court on Tuesday morning (23 December 2014) at 10.30am, and then serving these on the two defendants - the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the Government. The human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, who has been a consistent and principled advocate of both same-sex marriage and full civil partnership equality, and who set up the Equal Love campaign to that end, will join us outside the court. We have put in place an outstanding legal team to challenge both the registrars at Chelsea Register Office, who refused to register our notice of intention to form a civil partnership on the basis of our genders and sexual orientation, and the Government, which continues to discriminate against long-term cohabiting opposite-sex couples. Our solicitor, Louise Whitfield from leading public law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, is working with a top equalities barrister, Karon Monaghan QC. Louise helped Caroline Criado-Perez successfully challenge the Bank of England to include a woman on UK bank notes. Karon wrote THE book on Equality Law, and was awarded Liberty’s Human Rights Lawyer of the Year Award in 2010. You might also have noticed the campaign being covered – and us being interviewed – on BBC London News recently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-30462385 Finally, we are committed to being fully transparent about how we use funds. We have so far made two payments to law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, amounting to £7,800. Our GoFundMe supporters have contributed £3,678, for which we are immensely grateful; the rest we have paid for out of our own money. We hope that those who have donated feel that we have made good use of these resources in running a multifaceted campaign in public, media and legal spheres. We anticipate additional costs in the future and will be seeking further financial support in the months ahead. We thank you for your continued support. Quite literally, we could not have taken this campaign and legal challenge forward without your moral and financial support. We hope that we are able to live up to your expectations in supporting the campaign, and that our efforts to become civil partners will result in us and many others being able to express our love and formalize our relationships in a way that is true and meaningful to us, at the same time as providing us all with the legal rights and protections that we need and desire. Please continue to encourage others to support our efforts by signing the petition (http://change.org/civilpartnershipsforall) and contributing to our fundraising drive (http://www.gofundme.com/civilpartnerships) . We will be in touch with more soon. Happy holidays and here’s to full relationship equality in 2015! Rebecca and Charles