‘A Breakthrough’

I Their ceremony was a simple one derived from the Book of Common Prayer, performed in a chapel almost empty except for television crews and handful of well‐wishers. The Rev. Robert Sirico of the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles, part of a national organization of predominantly homosexual churches, officiated with the he:p of a woman minister, Freda Smith. They changed the words “husbands” and “wives” to “spouses,” with Mr. Sirico inserting the phrase “as long as there is love” before “till death do us part.”

Afterward, the two men smiled, kissed, held hands and spoke to reporters. They were dressed nearly identically in dungarees and white shirts decorated with a sprig of flowers.

The minister, a native of Brooklyn, called the licenses and the marriage “a breakthrough,” remarking with a grin, “I feel like I imagine Moses felt when he split the Red Sea.”

Mr. Sirico and other samesex spokesmen note that thousands of homosexual couples have been united in religious ceremonies in recent years without benefit of a government document. Others have received licenses by having one partner pose as a member of the opposite sex.

Rejected by Courts

Boulder was not the first county to issue a license to couple of the same sex. In January, two men in Phoenix were granted a license, but the Maricopa County Attorney charged one man with filing false documents, since he had filled out the woman's section. Last month, a local court voided the marriage.

According to Henry H. Foster, professor of law at New York University and a vice president of the family law sec tion of the American Bar Association most states do not specifically prohibit marriages between persons of the same sex because the language of the law is so clear in referring to male‐female couples.

Test cases have all gone against couples of the same sex.

The most important occurred in Minnesota in 1971, when two men attempting to get a marriage license were turned down by the state's highest court. The United States Supreme Court then refused to review their case. The two men are still trying to file a joint income tax return.