LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — One of the country’s top Christian evangelicals debated a University of Louisville law professor on whether gays should be legally allowed to marry.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told a group of about 75 people gathered at a downtown restaurant that, “marriage is the basic molecular structure of human society.”

Mohler, one of the country’s leading religious conservative voices, said legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians conflicts with biblical teachings and tradition.

If gay marriage is allowed, Mohler said, “marriage would not be redefined, it would be destroyed.”

Samuel A. Marcosson, a U of L professor whose research focuses on sexual orientation and the law, said the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment should afford gays the right to marry.

“Those who are in the majority, those who have defined marriage through the legislature and the legal process, have accrued to themselves the legal status of marriage and not treated the minority equally,” Marcosson said. “There is, in other words, enormously unequal treatment involved in the privilege accorded to marriage.”

The topic has been hotly debated nationwide since a Nov. 18 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court removed legal barriers to gay marriage in that state.

Mohler said marriage was an “irreducible union” between a man and a woman.

“Marriage has established the basic unit of kinship, the basic location of sexual activity, of procreation, of reproduction and the raising of children,” Mohler said.

But Marcosson said keeping gays from the legal privileges of marriage hurts children being raised by same-sex couples.

“Keeping gay couples from marrying will not keep people from being raised by gay parents. All it will do is harm those children not to have the legal advantages that come with the fact that their parents’ marriage was recognized,” Marcosson said.

PITTSBURGH, Penn. (AP) — A judge permanently barred the Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations from hearing an eight-year-old complaint on whether the University of Pittsburgh should offer health benefits to same-sex partners of its employees.

Allegheny County Judge Robert Gallo’s opinion doesn’t address the university’s challenge of the city’s 1990 gay-rights law, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. The American Civil Liberties Union has said the law requires the university to offer the benefits.

Gallo, however, said the city commission has no jurisdiction to hear the dispute.

Pitt’s attorney, Paul Manion, said Gallo’s opinion vindicated the school, while the ACLU called the decision flawed and said it may appeal.

Former Pitt employee Deborah Henson filed the complaint with the human relations commission. Six others later joined her lawsuit.

In 2000, Pitt won an injunction barring the commission from hearing the lawsuit on the basis that the city law exceeded the scope of the state’s Human Relations Act.

The school also noted that a state law exempts public universities from local laws that mandate the health benefits be extended to domestic partners. Pitt is a state-affiliated school with 9,500 employees.

Earlier this year, Pitt’s attorneys argued that the injunction should be made permanent and Gallo agreed in the eight-page opinion.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) — A civil rights attorney challenged Utah’s ban on polygamy, citing a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas sodomy law.

The lawsuit says Salt Lake County clerks refused a marriage license to a couple because the man was already married to another woman, who had consented to the additional marriage.

In denying the marriage license, the county violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to practice their religion, attorney Brian Barnard said in the complaint.

The suit said polygamy is the plaintiffs’ “sincere and deeply held religious tenet.” The complaint does not say what religion the plaintiffs observe.

The suit argues that the Supreme Court protected defendants’ privacy in intimate matters when it struck down laws criminalizing gay sex last June, ruling that two gay men who were arrested after police entered their apartment and found them having sex were “entitled to respect for their private lives.”

Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff said the lawsuit goes far beyond the Supreme Court ruling.

“Any time you involve marriage, family, children — fundamental units of society — the state does have a compelling interest in what that is,” Shurtleff said. “It happens to be a felony crime here.”

Polygamy was part of the early beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was abandoned more than a century ago and outlawed as the territory sought statehood.

Some fundamentalist Mormons continue to believe in polygamy, and an estimated 30,000 in the West practice it.

Lawyers representing other polygamists have recently cited the Supreme Court ruling. Last month, the attorney for Tom Green, a convicted bigamist and child rapist, argued his client’s convictions should be thrown out in light of the case. The appeal of Rodney Holm — who was convicted of bigamy and unlawful sexual conduct with an underage girl — also cites the Texas case.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The State Crime Commission has signed off on legislation prohibiting sodomy in public but also recommended keeping a broader anti-sodomy law similar to an unconstitutional Texas statute.

The General Assembly will consider the bill during a 60-day session.

The commission drafted the new legislation in response to last year’s Supreme Court decision striking down the Texas sodomy ban. Del. David Albo (R-Fairfax), chairman of the commission, said the court made it clear that its ruling did not legalize sex acts in public.

“The court created a clear distinction between private and public sexual contact,” Albo said after the commission meeting.

With that in mind, the commission is proposing legislation that tracks the language of Virginia’s existing sodomy ban with one exception: It covers only sodomy in public places.

Gay rights groups have complained for years that Virginia’s anti-sodomy statute is used to target gays, even though it also applies to heterosexuals — including married couples. Several attempts to repeal the law have failed in recent years.

A violation of Virginia’s public sodomy ban would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison — the same punishment specified in the existing law.

“That was our concern — that public sodomy would still be a felony when other forms of public sexual activity are considered misdemeanors,” said Dyana Mason, executive director of the gay rights group Equality Virginia. “We fear this will continue to be used to harass gay men across the state.”

SEATTLE, Wash. (AP) — A United Methodist minister who told her bishop she is a lesbian will face a church trial that could lead to her removal from the pulpit.

A church committee voted, 5-2, to pursue a complaint against the Rev. Karen Dammann, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Ellensburg.

“In terms of the core issues, we have an uphill battle,” Dammann’s lawyer Lindsay Thompson said. “But I think — and Karen has said this as well — whatever happens will be good for the denomination because it’s going to force a broad airing of these issues,” which have been subject of an active debate within the church “for many years.”

A news release from the denomination’s Seattle office quoted Dammann as saying that “trying someone for being gay is bound to shake the tree — I hope in the direction of inclusiveness.”

Church officials have said the trial would be the first against a gay or lesbian pastor since 1987, when the credentials of the Rev. Rose Mary Denman of New Hampshire were revoked.

In February 2001, Dammann wrote to Bishop Elias Galvan, head of the Methodist Pacific Northwest Conference in Seattle, that she was in a “partnered, covenanted, homosexual relationship.” She and her partner, Meredith Savage, have a son. Galvan then filed a complaint.

In October, the church’s Judicial Council, its highest court, reversed the rulings of two regional panels, deciding the denomination’s Book of Discipline — which bars “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or serving as pastors — must be upheld.

While it would appear a decision against his client is likely, Thompson said, “God moves in mysterious ways sometimes.”

“I’m sure the committee struggled with it, since two members voted no anyway,” he said.