Becky and Linda can't stop gazing into each other's eyes as they sit on the couch in their cozy Lansing apartment. l A framed souvenir marriage certificate bearing the words "The County of San Francisco" is displayed on their wall. l They were one of nearly 4,000 couples pronounced "spouses for life" after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed City Hall to issue marriage licenses in mid-February. l The weddings were halted last month after the state Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order.

"I don't really recommend getting married in less than 48 hours," said Becky Richendollar, a 27-year-old zoology senior. "We did it because of the window of opportunity."

Gay marriage has been made legal in several countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Canada, but is heavily debated in the United States. Michigan does not allow same-sex marriages or civil unions.

From California to New York, lawmakers, residents and religious leaders are being forced to redefine or defend their views of marriage. Some are questioning old laws, while others are drafting new ones. Either way, further legislation on the issue will have serious implications for the future options offered to gay couples.

Wedding bells

Richendollar and Linda Oakleaf, a 33-year-old camp counselor, met at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., where Richendollar was a student. The two hit it off at a party thrown by Oakleaf, and after dating long-distance for two years, they got engaged last summer.

"I proposed to Becky," Oakleaf said. "Then she went digging through her purse. At the bottom of her purse, she had a ring for me, and she asked me right back."

Oakleaf was on a trip to San Francisco in February for the American Camp Association National Conference and heard about the San Francisco marriages. Richendollar flew out for the ceremony.

"It was crazy," Oakleaf said of the scene, which included elated same-sex couples, people bearing gifts of flowers and candy, and both supporters and protesters boasting picket signs.

Every 30 minutes after a marriage was completed, cheering could be heard within the walls of City Hall, Oakleaf said.

"When we walked out, complete strangers came up to us and would say, 'Oh my god, you look great! Can I hug you?'" Richendollar said.

The forms the two filled out prior to the ceremony came with a disclaimer at the top that stated that the marriage could not guarantee the rights and privileges of heterosexual marriages. Should the marriage ever be deemed unlawful, the two plan on putting the certificate in a safe-deposit box until it becomes valid again.

Oakleaf, however, chooses to just remember the experience.

"We stood up there and said our vows just like generations before," she said. "They can't take that away, and they can't take away that it happened."

Though most friends and family were supportive, the couple also received lukewarm feedback.

"My mother was kind of not too thrilled," Richendollar said. "My sister got married a year or two years ago, and my mother shows her wedding pictures to her friends. For me, she doesn't even tell her friends I have a partner, let alone that we even got married.

"That kind of hurts."

Living within the law

Even though Michigan law would have prohibited Richendollar and Oakleaf from marrying anyway, Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt, recently set out to further enforce marriage as a union between only a man and a woman.

Cropsey introduced a bill in October that would reiterate this definition, but the bill was defeated in the House.

"I'd just like to see constitutional issues clarified to say that marriage is between a man and a woman, just like it's always been and just like science says it is," Cropsey said.

Cropsey said he believes that being gay is a choice that undermines marriage, family, and child-rearing.

"Who's to say that there aren't other sexual orientations that wouldn't want preferred rights? Like pedophilia, and what about bestiality?" he asked.

"If you take away the ideas of procreation and parenting, then the children suffer."

Rep. Chris Kolb, D-Ann Arbor, Michigan's only openly gay representative, said he was disappointed when he heard of Cropsey's proposal and tried to influence his fellow representatives to vote against it.

"I wasn't surprised, but I've been working to broaden people's perspective on LGBT issues, and in this case, it was once again trying to fight a preventative battle versus enlighten the legislature," he said.

Elizabeth Boyd, spokeswoman for Gov. Jennifer Granholm, said Granholm feels that though gay people should receive rights and recognition as couples, they should not be granted marriages.

"She also does not think it's the state's business to prohibit people's personal lifelong commitments, and she supports the concept of civil unions," Boyd said.

Richendollar said she isn't satisfied with those types of unions.

"Separate but equal is not equal," she said. "I thought we had that figured out. Civil unions don't give the same rights as marriages.

"Now that I've gotten married, I don't think I'd be able to avail myself to civil unions."

Jon Hoadley, a social relations and women's studies junior and a chair of the MSU Stonewall Democrats Caucus, said he felt betrayed by Granholm's announcement.

"It's disappointing that the governor was so supportive of gay youth and then she turns her back when marriage comes around," said Hoadley, who also is secretary of South Complex's lesbian, bi, gay and transgender group PRISM.

"My relationship is just as valid as a heterosexual relationship," Hoadley said. "And it's even more valid than Britney Spears' 55-hour drunken wedding-fest in Las Vegas."

A happy home

Richendollar and Oakleaf said they feel more like a family since their marriage in February.

"I'm always saying the word 'wife' just for the hell of it," Richendollar said as she affectionately played with Oakleaf's hands. "I love talking about my wife."

The two have decided that they want to have children in 2007.

"We'll probably do the sperm bank thing, because I really don't trust the state not to take my child away, so I at least want one of us or the other to have a physical claim on the kid," Oakleaf said.

Gary Glenn, the president of the American Family Association of Michigan, a Midland-based organization that promotes the traditional family, said homosexual parents can have negative effects on children.

"Society has a right to defend the weakest members of society, which are children," he said. "Children being raised in any other environment is to the detriment of children."

But PRISM president Franny Howes said she finds this argument upsetting.

"Did letting African Americans and women vote devalue voting?" she said. "I don't think so.

"It's not fair to a man and a woman with a heterosexual family to assume that they are perfect, because it assumes that there are strict gender roles," she said. "It's a totally Western view of families, and worldwide, not all families look like that."

But according to Glenn, the traditional nuclear family is the only way to go.

"Obviously, the traditional family is facing challenges, but if you've got a leak in the boat, the solution is not to punch a bigger hole in the bottom," he said. "A one-man, one-woman marriage predates any religion, predates our country and it predates law. If it didn't, we wouldn't be here."

Also, he said, if homosexual marriages are allowed, it could open the door for other kinds of marriage to be legalized.

"If there is a constitutional right to engage in homosexual behavior, it might be argued by a special-interest group that one man marrying 15 women should be allowed," he said.

Oakleaf said she can't believe that her marriage could have that negative an impact upon society.

"They're wrong," Oakleaf said. "They're not afraid that I'm going to hurt their marriage. They're afraid it's going to change society in a way to make queer OK."

Sen. Virg Bernero, D-Lansing, also said he believes the way gay people live their lives does not negatively affect the lives of straight people.

"People who pound their chests and get worked up about gay marriage really need to look in the mirror," he said. "Marriage was not under attack by gay people. Marriage is under attack by cultural forces that have nothing to do with whether the lesbians across the street are married or not.

"Beating up on gay people and calling it defense of marriage is pretty despicable," he said. "I frankly think it's much ado about very little."

Fighting with faith

Richendollar and Oakleaf aren't religious, but some argue that religion is affecting politicians' opinions on what the state should advocate for all citizens, religious or not.

The Edgewood United Church of Christ, 469 N. Hagadorn Road, is an "open and affirming" parish, meaning that the parishioners voted to officially accept LBGT people as part of the church.

"If people are created in the image of God, then being gay is part of God's being," said the Rev. Karen Gale, a bisexual pastor at the church. "Are parts of the Bible against homosexuality? Yes, that's true, but there's also parts against wearing mixed fibers."

But Jarael Major, a general business administration and pre-law freshman, said he feels that Christianity does not support the idea of gay marriage or homosexual couples.

"Christianity says two people of the same sex should not be together, and it's not supported in the Bible anywhere," he said. "I just don't think it's right.

"It's disgusting."

St. John Student Parish, a Catholic Church located at 327 M.A.C. Ave., advocates two necessary components for a marriage: a love relationship between two mutually supportive people and two people who are open to the reproduction of children.

Mike Liberato, the director of student faith formation for the parish, said Catholicism's biggest objection to gay marriage is that a "gay couple is not structurally capable of having a child."

Liberato said though Catholics believe that being gay is not a sin, acting on homosexual tendencies is a sin because it is a sexual activity out of wedlock.

"It's difficult for gay Catholics - there is no option for them to be sexually active as there is for heterosexuals," he said.

But the church believes that first and foremost, people are human beings, regardless of their sexual orientation, Liberato said.

"It's not the central component of a person's life," he said. "A person is more than their orientation.

"It's not the end all, be all."

But Asad Khan, president of the executive committee of the Islamic Center of East Lansing, 920 S. Harrison Avenue, said the Islamic faith prohibits homosexuality altogether.

"I see it as any other given natural abnormality ? it could be cured or it couldn't be cured," he said. "I wouldn't go anywhere else but terming it a defect."

Reform Jewish Rabbi Richard Baroff of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, 1924 Coolidge Road, said regardless of whether being gay is right or wrong, he thinks the debate needs to slow down.

"In the last third of the twentieth century, procreation and marriage have gone their separate ways," he said. "To have marriage pertain to any two people who love each other would divorce procreation from marriage completely, and I don't know if that's a wise thing to do.

"There's a lot of pain involved in moving slowly, but the cost of making a mistake is very high," he said.

But Oakleaf thinks things aren't moving fast enough.

"I'm really cynical about this," she said. "I've watched queer and lesbian leadership, and I feel it's slow enough. I don't think it needs to be slower.

"We have a long, long fight in front of us."

Sonia Khaleel can be reached at khaleel1@msu.edu.