Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, was the Senate sponsor of the amendment and is co-chairman of the pro-amendment campaign Constitutional Defense of Marriage Alliance. Buttars said he wasn't directly involved in drafting the amendment but is confident of its wording.

"The wording is the combined work of a handful of legal constitutionalists," he said. "Every word is word-smithed. We knew it would come under this kind of fire. I believe we'll be sued. . . . I believe we'll prevail."

A similar state constitutional amendment in Nebraska is currently being challenged in federal court, and ballot initiatives to amend the constitutions in Arkansas and Louisiana are also being challenged in court.

Eyer said the Utah ACLU hasn't ruled out litigation concerning the amendment, before or after the Nov. 2 vote.

Duncan said Utah's amendment was crafted to be interpreted narrowly. He said Nebraska's amendment could be interpreted more broadly because it specifically prohibits recognition of civil unions, domestic partnerships or other similar same-sex relationships.

"There are a lot more subjects on which people can get legislation that are much more narrow than marriage," he said.

Eyer countered that just like Nebraska's amendment, Utah's would separate as unequal and bar a class of Utah citizens from seeking legal protections from their state legislators.

Gubernatorial candidate Jon Huntsman Jr., who supports the amendment, has proposed reciprocal benefit legislation to give legal protections based on a financial relationship, not a sexual one.

Scott McCoy, campaign manager for Don't Amend Alliance, which opposes the amendment, said such reasoning is quantitative, not qualitative.

Instead of looking at a number of legal protections individually, and deciding how many are OK before a relationship approaches a similarity to marriage, McCoy said he looks at the quality of such protections. He said Nebraska's attorney general issued a qualitative opinion that a bill to grant to a surviving domestic partner decision-making in organ donation, burial and funeral arrangements was unconstitutional.

He said Nebraska's attorney general described those legal benefits as "marriage-like."

"Emergency medical-care decisions for a partner, that's something a heterosexual spouse is afforded automatically."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com