My chauffeur is a homosexual with spiky hair and red-framed glasses who speeds me on a Yamaha XJ900 motorbike to meet the lesbian couple. He is Peter Brunnen, the gay rights activist and Labour councillor. And they are the businesswoman and former nurse who this week won a three-year battle to become foster parents. They fear exposure and refuse to be named, photographed or visited at home. So we meet in Brunnen’s office, where he greets a waiting lad with a kiss on the lips.

Hampshire councillors this week overturned their earlier ban which rejected the couple as potential carers because of their sexuality, thereby entitling them to foster children under the age of six for short periods. Jane, 35, and Susan, 36, (not their real names) have been together for 10 years. Susan, an ex-nurse turned part-time A-level student, was once married and has two children: a boy, 13, and girl, 12.

Are the couple open about their lesbian relationship? ‘We don’t go around waving flags, but our friends and neighbours know,’ says Susan. Her children’s classmates also know. ‘The smallest lad picked on my son who just laughed at him and locked him in his locker,’ she laughs.

‘Then let him out,’ Jane adds, hastily.

They aren’t overtly demonstrative in front of the children. ‘We hold hands or hug,’ says Jane. ‘That’s all I consider appropriate for any child to see . . . I think people make too much of sex.’ Their son (as they both call him) stopped telling people he had ‘two mummies’ when he was seven. They maintain firmly that their children don’t receive a distorted view of the world – and they don’t actively promote homosexuality. ‘Quite the opposite,’ says Jane. ‘You don’t say, ‘This is us and this is how it should be.’ ‘ Jane has sincere eyes, ponytail and teacherish clothes, and Susan wears short hair and jeans. They wear wedding rings to symbolise their mutual attachment.

Susan was married for six years and Jane had ‘lots’ of heterosexual relationships. They’re not men-haters. (Susan lusts after Lovejoy.) And they’re not militant feminists, just common-sensical about women’s rights. Susan wants to foster because she has valuable nursing skills to offer. ‘When I worked in hospitals, I saw the state of these children and know how difficult it is for them to find foster parents.’

And Jane? ‘I want to give something back. Something to people who are less happy. I’ve had a pretty good life and have a stable relationship.’ Most fostering reflects the norms of society and they don’t dismiss the traditional Happy Family model. (‘It can be good or awful.’) But they see nothing unsuitable for children about their home. ‘Single-sex families are not that different from ordinary families,’ maintains Jane.

They don’t deem the lack of a male role model a problem. ‘It’s important to have both points of view, but not vital to have both available within the household. You make sure the children have contact with positive, successful males,’ says Jane.

‘Anyway, it’s mostly the mother who takes over the care in a normal family,’ adds Susan. They would never enact male/female roles, considering such behaviour ludicrous.

They will only foster short-term, so cannot understand the press interest. They only want a young child, so as not to compete with Susan’s offspring, and don’t mind about the child’s sex. They’ll happily care for the mentally or physically disabled – ‘to give their parents a break’ – and different races.

It’s likely they’ll be given children who are neglected and unwanted. ‘That’s the point of doing the job,’ says Susan. But aren’t they putting them at a further disadvantage? ‘All that matters is that the child goes to someone who is going to listen, provide for all his needs, food, warmth and security.’

Wouldn’t it be harder for such children to grow up with a positive image of men? ‘I don’t think that living with two women means that you won’t trust men,’ says Susan. ‘You can have your father in the house and discover that men are untrustworthy.’

They think abused children would actively benefit in a single-sex family of the opposite gender to the abuser. And a teenager questioning his sexual identity might be helped. ‘It would give him the space to come to terms with whether or not he’s gay,’ says Jane.

Susan’s father was a sheet-metal worker and Jane’s a plant operator. They say they had happy childhoods and that their parents’ marriages were ‘fine’. Both women are agnostic (nominally Church of England). They weren’t exposed to lesbianism as children. ‘I didn’t know it existed until I was 19. Stupid me!’ says Jane. Surprisingly they say their parents weren’t upset by their relationship.

Jane considers Susan an excellent parent: ‘I know the children come before me.’ She would have liked her own children and would have had artificial insemination. ‘I don’t feel sad though. I’ve done my share of parenting.’ But she applauds their arrangement. ‘We probably go more out of our way than most to make sure our children grow up without prejudice and treat them as individuals. Ours is a happy, nurturing and stable family.’ They are loving and patient and there is no reason to disbelieve them. They’re not interested in political correctness, just in a child having the most appropriate placement for his needs. There is little research on children brought up by lesbian couples and no evidence that it harms them. I start to ask whether they’d prefer . . .

‘Yes,’ interrupts Susan. ‘I would prefer my children to get married and have children. They both talk about doing it. That’s what they want and it’ll make life a lot easier for them.’