SAN FRANCISCO--Same-sex weddings are continuing despite a "cease and desist" order from Judge James L. Warren.

California voters passed a proposition in 2000 banning same-sex marriage. The proposition passed 61-38 percent. It reads, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

But San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ordered the licenses issued, says the California state constitution allows same-sex marriages because it is a civil rights issue.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released a statement asking San Francisco to obey state law.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, many city churches are also disregarding not only the state law, but church laws as well by performing same-sex ceremonies.

The Rev. Karen Oliveto, pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church in San Francisco, has blessed eight couples who were issued civil marriage licenses since the marriage march began.

"We are in a whole new world, and the church better catch up," Oliveto said.

She also presided over what she said was the first legal gay marriage to take place inside a Methodist church sanctuary.

"This may make some United Methodists angry, but anyone who knows the location of our ministry knows that I acted faithfully," said Oliveto, whose 170-member Noe Valley congregation is about half gay, half straight.

National church law in the 8-million-member denomination specifically forbids holy union ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples. Oliveto may lose her ministerial credentials. But she has support from representatives of six other religious traditions who stood by her to support the same-sex weddings.

Episcopalian, Jewish, Lutheran, Baptist, Unitarian and Methodist clergy in San Francisco voiced support for gay and lesbian people.

Leaders of St. Francis Lutheran Church there invited same-sex couples to their church for a blessing. The church was expelled from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1990 for hiring two openly lesbian pastors. The couple, the Reverends Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, were among the 2,600 couples married at City Hall in San Francisco.

Other protestants in San Francisco maintain a biblical stance on homosexuality. The Rev. P.T. Mammen, president of the San Francisco Evangelical Association, said his reading of the bible clearly prohibits the sexual union of homosexuals and unmarried heterosexuals.

"When we violate God's principles, we reap the consequences," said Mammen, a minister with the Church of the Nazarene. "No civil authority is above God's law."