The appellants, Christian hotel proprietors who believed that sexual relations should only take place within monogamous heterosexual marriage, appealed against a finding that they had discriminated unlawfully against the respondent civil partners by refusing to honour their booking for a double-bedded room, contrary to Regulation 4(1) of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007. They contended that they had consistently restricted double-bedded rooms to married couples only – a policy that, prior to the arrival of the respondents, had affected only unmarried heterosexual couples – and that, because their policy was about sexual practice rather than sexual orientation, there had been no direct discrimination. They accepted that the Regulations equated civil partnership with marriage but only where the discrimination was based on sexual orientation – an interpretation of their behaviour that they rejected. They argued that the court had been wrong to find direct discrimination contrary to Regulation 4(1), contending that it was their religious objection to a particular form of sexual conduct that was the basis for the restriction, as evidenced by the fact that many unmarried heterosexual couples had been affected by it. Rafferty LJ did not consider that the appellants faced any difficulty in manifesting their religious beliefs under Article 9 ECHR; they were merely prohibited from so doing in the commercial context they had chosen. She held that the respondents had suffered direct discrimination. The chancellor concurred: Mr and Mrs Bull were not obliged to provide double-bedded rooms at all, but, if they did so, then they must be prepared to let them to homosexual couples, at least those in a civil partnership, as well as to heterosexual married couples. Hooper LJ concurred, but entered the brief but important caveat that it mattered not in law whether the homosexual couple were in a civil partnership or not. [Frank Cranmer]