Jim McAuley for The New York Times
Moudi Sbeity, left, and Derek Kitchen, two of the lead plaintiffs in the legal challenge against Utah's ban on same-sex marriage.
SALT LAKE CITY — Ever since it was a distant Western territory straining for statehood, Utah has been entwined in battles over what makes a marriage.
Before Congress would allow Utah to join the union, it required Mormon leaders here to adopt a state constitution declaring that polygamy and plural marriages — once a religious principle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — would be "forever prohibited." A century later, at the height of the AIDS crisis, the state passed a law — since overturned — barring people with AIDS from marrying and nullifying marriages if a partner had the disease.
And now, a legal struggle over Utah's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage has catapulted this socially conservative state to the center of the national debate over who should be allowed to wed, and whether states have the right to limit marriages to one man and one woman.
The stakes grew increasingly urgent in the past two days as the United States Supreme Court put a halt to same-sex marriages while Utah appeals a lower court's decision allowing the unions. More than 1,000 gay couples have exchanged vows in Utah, but on Tuesday they wondered how the state would treat their marriages now that the ban was again the law of the land.
A spokeswoman for Sean D. Reyes, the state attorney general, said his office had been poring over Utah's laws and other legal cases to determine how to treat the newlyweds now floating in what he called a "legal limbo."
One of those is Randi White. Ms. White said that she and her partner, Laura, had been planning a "real wedding." But when Judge Robert J. Shelby of Federal District Court declared last month that gay couples had a fundamental right to marry, she said, they spontaneously decided to join the flood and wed immediately. Ms. White is seven months pregnant, and both women want to be the child's legal parents.
"I don't know what it means now," Ms. White said. "It's a little scary."
State offices and private employers have already begun extending spousal benefits to gay couples, many of whom have taken steps to list their husbands and wives on their health insurance and are planning to file joint state income-tax returns. Gay spouses are taking steps to adopt their children or be listed on their babies' birth certificates.
As Utah appeals its case to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, it could decide to honor the unions granted during the 17 days between the time Judge Shelby's decision opened the door to same-sex marriages and the Supreme Court closed it again. Or the state could decide those unions do not count, a move that could provoke a wave of legal action.
"Now, nobody knows," said Clifford J. Rosky, a law professor at the University of Utah and the chairman of the board of Equality Utah, a gay rights group. "The marriages were valid when they were entered, and they remain valid. The question is whether Utah will recognize them."
In Utah, the tangled history of what constitutes a marriage has infused the current debate. When supporters of same-sex marriage discuss the Mormon Church's opposition to expanding marital rights, they sometimes cite the church's 1890 disavowal of polygamy as evidence that church positions can change, sometimes profoundly. Opponents say that if Utah had the power to outlaw an entire class of marriages to gain statehood in 1896, it now has the right to define marriage as a heterosexual institution.
In December, another federal judge struck down part of Utah's antipolygamy law, saying its ban on "cohabitation" violated constitutional guarantees of the free exercise of religion. Some critics of same-sex marriage seized on the decision as evidence that the growing approval of same-sex marriage would weaken laws based on morality.
Utah has already warned gay couples that their marriages could be made void if the state's legal appeals succeed. And like Amber and Kimberly, a newly married couple who live in Salt Lake City with their baby daughter, many have been pondering what hangs in the balance.
Together for five years, the women married largely for their daughter, so that both could be her legal parents, which they say would have been impossible in Utah without a marriage license. Amber is the girl's biological mother; Kimberly said she had no legal rights.
"I wake up in the morning, and my daughter calls me 'Ma' and Amber 'Mama,' " said Kimberly, who spoke on the condition that her and her wife's last names not be used, for fear of jeopardizing the adoption. "This is our child. And she deserves the security of knowing that that's not going to be taken away."
The couple filed an adoption petition last month. But Kimberly said she now worried whether a Utah court would still consider her a legal spouse.
"Every day, whether I'm taking my daughter to the doctor or to music classes, I can't make decisions for her," she said. "I can't visit her in the hospital. And as she gets older and understands these things, the basic need for her to feel safe isn't going to be there. I'm a legal stranger."
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