SAN FRANCISCO - Opponents of gay marriage failed Friday to stop an act of ongoing civil disobedience in San Francisco, where under the direction of the newly elected mayor the city has begun issuing marriage licenses to hundreds of gay couples in defiance of state law.

The nationally unprecedented wedding march at City Hall that began Thursday morning continued Friday, where 559 same-sex couples had taken their vows by early evening. The spree is expected to continue over the long holiday weekend.

After a judge denied a petition Friday to block more licenses from being granted, city officials announced that they would keep special weekend and President's Day hours to accommodate the crowds who have flocked to San Francisco from throughout California and other states.

"It's like beating a clock," said Michelle Santiago, 36, who drove up from the Central Valley at 5 a.m. with her partner of 16 years, Lucy Valencia, 41, to apply for a marriage license.

On Friday afternoon, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund asked a Superior Court judge to issue a stay that would prevent San Francisco officials from issuing any more licenses and to invalidate the ones that had already been recorded.

The organization represents a California group seeking to uphold Proposition 22, a ballot initiative approved by voters in 2000 that held the state would only recognize marriages between a man and a woman.

"I think the court should set the example that municipal anarchy is unacceptable," lawyer Robert Tyler said in arguing for the emergency stay.

But Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart countered that the petitioners had not met their legal burden of showing that the city's actions were causing "irreparable harm" to justify an emergency stay.

"What is the parade of horrors, if you will, that will visit the city and others if they are not enjoined?" Stewart asked.

In the end, the judge told the Alliance Defense Fund lawyers that they hadn't given the city enough of the petition to properly make their request. Warren told both sides to return at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

A second group, Campaign for California Families, also filed a legal challenge to the city's authority to marry gay and lesbian couples and has secured an 11 a.m. Tuesday hearing for its case.

"No one made the mayor of San Francisco king; he can't play God. He cannot trash the vote of the people," Randy Thomasson, director of the Campaign for California Families, said at a news conference in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the marble passageways inside the formal City Hall resembled a Las Vegas wedding chapel as much as a seat of government Friday, as a steady stream of couples took vows promising to be "spouses for life." City supervisors, a school board member and clerks from other offices were pressed into duty as deputy marriage commissioners to keep up with the demand.

"It's a special day in San Francisco," said Mayor Gavin Newsom, who personally officiated at two weddings - those of his chief of staff and his policy director to their longtime partners. "We are confident we are doing the right thing."

City Hall security was beefed up as a precaution, although there were no threats issued to disturb the celebratory atmosphere. Couples toasted each other with sparkling apple cider and left under canopies of rice tossed by cheering onlookers.

Hundreds of same-sex couples began lining up at 4 a.m. Friday. County Clerk Nancy Alfaro reported that her office had issued 755 marriage licenses by 6 p.m. Friday, the overwhelming majority to same-sex couples.

Those licenses may face another obstacle besides the pair of pending lawsuits. After a marriage license is recorded by county officials, it is sent on for filing with the state Office of Vital Records, a division of the Health and Human Services Agency.

Terri Delgadillo, the agency's deputy secretary, said that officials review each license to make sure the state-issued form has not been altered. If it has, the form is sent back the county where it originated, Delgadillo said, noting that the forms currently require certification that a man and woman are bride and groom.

San Francisco officials have insisted the licenses they have handed out are legally binding, even though they are revised to be "gender-neutral." But Stewart, the deputy city attorney, acknowledged that the state may not accept them. In the meantime, it will remain unclear what legal weight the marriage licenses will carry, Stewart said.

"The answer will only be known after we see whether the state accepts them and in joins in the city's constitutional position" that denying licenses to same-sex clause violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution, she said.

The newly revised marriage applications, which refer to "Applicant 1" and "Applicant 2" instead of "bride" and "groom," carry disclaimers encouraging "same-gender couples" to "seek legal advice regarding the effect of entering into marriage."

"Marriage of lesbian and gay couples may not be recognized as valid by any jurisdiction other than San Francisco, and may not be recognized as valid by any employer," the disclaimer said.

San Francisco appears to be the first city in the nation to officially support same-sex marriage licenses; city clerks in Arizona and Colorado in 1975 issued licenses to gay and lesbian couples that were later revoked or declared void.

Around the country, gays and lesbians emboldened by San Francisco's move and by the constitutional debate over gay marriage in Massachusetts went to courthouses Thursday and Friday demanding their own marriage licenses - and getting summarily rejected, since every state in the nation bans gay marriage. The "National Freedom to Marry Day" protests have been held every Feb. 12 since 1998.

In Richmond, Va., eight couples clutching pink "bride" and blue "groom" applications were denied licenses as legislators three blocks away debated a bill affirming Virginia's ban on same-sex marriages.

"It's a heartbreaker to be rejected," said Mary Gay Hutcherson, who was accompanied by her partner of 10 years, Yolanda Farnum. "But it was empowering. I think we deserve a license from the state of Virginia. And I think someday we will get one."