RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Gay activists in Virginia are toying with a new motto for the state: “Virginia is for lovers. *Some restrictions apply.”

Gays and lesbians are angry and even threatening to leave the state over a new law that will prohibit civil unions and could interfere with contracts between same-sex couples. Some legal experts call it the most restrictive anti-gay law in the nation.

“I won’t buy a home in Virginia. I’m done,” said Bo Shuff, a 30-year-old gay rights activist who has rented in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington for the last two years.

Added Edna Johnston, a lesbian who has scuttled plans to move her historic preservation consulting business from Washington to northern Virginia: “It’s not a signal, it’s a message: ‘You’re not welcome.’”

The new law is an amendment to the state’s 1997 Affirmation of Marriage Act, which prohibits same-sex marriages in Virginia. The amendment extends that ban to civil unions, partnership contracts and other “arrangements between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage.”

Virginia’s attorney general and other supporters say the law provides a needed safeguard for the institution of marriage and does not deprive anyone of individual rights.

But some legal experts say the law is so vague and ill-defined that it could interfere with legal contracts such as powers of attorney, wills, medical directives, child custody and property arrangements and joint bank accounts.

“For the Virginia legislature to go as far as they did, knowing that this is probably unconstitutional, to me it is a political statement,” said Henry F. Fradella, a law professor at the College of New Jersey who specializes in gay rights law. “I have not seen anything quite so radical.”

The bill’s sponsor, Del. Robert Marshall, R-Prince William, said the law is aimed at preventing same-sex couples from acquiring the benefits of marriage through other means. One state, Massachusetts, has legalized same-sex marriage. Civil unions are legal in Vermont, and California and Hawaii have domestic partnership laws that provide legal rights to gay and lesbian relationships. New Jersey has a partnership law taking effect July 1.

“Civil union is a proxy for marriage and domestic partnership is a proxy for civil unions,” Marshall said.

Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, the likely Republican nominee for governor next year, echoed this in an advisory opinion, saying he believed the law was constitutionally defendable.

Conservative groups such as the Family Foundation also have praised the law, which passed the Republican-controlled legislature by a veto-proof margin after Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner tried to amend it to make it less restrictive.

Warner said the bill interferes with people’s right to enter contracts and violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee to due process and equal protection. He said constitutional scholars across the state urged him to veto it.

“I think the courts will show that it’s unconstitutional,” Warner said. “This bill went way beyond gay marriage and civil unions.”

The state’s leading gay rights organization, Equality Virginia, is discussing options for challenging the law with the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, a national gay and lesbian advocacy group. A statewide protest is planned June 30, the day before the law takes effect.

But some gays and lesbians say the piling on of anti-gay legislation is starting to wear them down.

Virginia is the only state where companies not large enough to underwrite their own insurance policies are prohibited from offering domestic partner benefits. The state bans joint adoptions by same-sex couples and refuses to list the names of same-sex couples from other states on the birth certificates of children adopted here.

Lawmakers also shot down attempts this year to rewrite the state’s anti-sodomy law to conform with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a law that made sodomy a crime.

Barry Parsons, a 39-year-old lawyer, left Virginia for Washington, D.C., in 1999 so he and his same-sex partner of 12 years could adopt a baby. He said Virginia could suffer economically if more professional gays and lesbians like him move out.

“I went to law school in Virginia ... and the state of Virginia invested a substantial amount of money in my education,” Parsons said. “After four years I left and that’s when my income started to pick up. Now all my taxes are going to D.C.”