S.F. Wedding Planners Are Pursuing a Legal Strategy

As the sodomy cases moved through the courts, gay rights lawyers also worked on custody rights for lesbian mothers. During the last decade, the battle has shifted to domestic partner rights.

Those efforts provided useful lessons.

"What we saw was that many states would interpret their state constitutions as being more protective of rights of equality and liberty than under the federal Constitution," Davidson said.

Even as the major groups hesitated to test laws on marriage, individual couples brought cases in Hawaii and Alaska. In both states, the gay couples won court fights, but then saw their victories overturned by referendums that amended their states' constitutions to ban marriage by same-sex couples.

Legislators in more than a dozen states are now debating making similar changes to their constitutions. Although most states have laws defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, gay rights lawyers could challenge them as discriminatory under the states' constitutions.

There is also a growing movement to amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent gays from marrying throughout the country. But such amendments are extremely rare.

Gay rights groups, impressed by the earlier legal victories in Hawaii and Alaska, finally decided to prepare a legal challenge themselves

In Vermont, gay "lawyers and community groups went downtown to Kiwanis clubs, PTA meetings, church picnics, you name it," said Kendell of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "Wherever five or more people were gathered, there were average Vermonters who just happened to be gay to talk about the issue."

Vermont's high court eventually ruled that the state had to provide gay couples whatever state benefits were given to married couples. The Legislature passed a civil union law in response.

The movement next targeted Massachusetts, selecting that state because it already had many laws protecting gay people. In the biggest court victory for the same-sex marriage movement so far, Massachusetts' high court ruled in November that gays must be permitted to wed.

Massachusetts legislators deadlocked earlier this month on an effort to amend the state Constitution to limit marriage to male-female couples, and are scheduled to resume a constitutional convention March 11. Even if the legislators can agree on how such an amendment should be written, it could not take effect for two years. Marriage licenses have been ordered to be issued by May 17.