PROVIDENCE — The debate stemming from Rhode Island’s first same-sex divorce case is escalating as the Supreme Court reviews a second round of legal briefs that delve into the meaning of the word “marriage,” the limits of judicial power and even “inter-species marriage” and “marrying dead bodies.”

The case involves two Providence women — Margaret R. Chambers and Cassandra B. Ormiston — who married in Massachusetts in May 2004 and are now seeking a divorce in Rhode Island. The Supreme Court is weighing this certified question: “May the Family Court properly recognize, for the purpose of entertaining a divorce petition, the marriage of two persons of the same sex who were purportedly married in another state?”

The state’s high court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Oct. 9, and in the meantime it has invited state officials and other interested parties to submit friend-of-the-court briefs. In all, 16 briefs were filed by the initial Aug. 1 deadline, and six briefs were filed in response to those briefs by Wednesday’s deadline. A third round of briefs is due Aug. 31.

In support of their arguments, the authors of the legal briefs have quoted everyone from Humpty Dumpty to Abraham Lincoln.

The Family Research Council, based in Washington, D.C., and the Rev. Lyle Mook, of South Kingstown, filed a response brief, saying, “This court is being requested literally to ignore the true meaning of ‘marriage’ that has defined the institution for centuries throughout the world.”

The brief, written by Alliance Defense Fund lawyers and Middletown lawyer Laura C. Harrington, then quoted from the Lewis Carroll book in which Humpty Dumpty says: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“Appellants and their supporting cast have taken the Humpty Dumpty approach to the term ‘marriage,’ nowhere defining what they mean by it, obviously assuming it means something other than a union of a man and a woman, and using it with a malleability never contemplated by the judicial decisions they cite,” the brief said. “This is unequivocally true for Rhode Island. ‘Marriage’ in Rhode Island is not ambiguous and only means the union of one man and one woman — no more and no less.”

In its response brief, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, based in Boston, said Chambers and Ormiston were married in Fall River on May 26, 2004, and the court record contains a certified copy of their Massachusetts certificate of marriage.

That legal status “exists despite how much these [friends of the court] dislike and disapprove of it. They cannot will it out of existence,” the GLAD brief said. “While [their] clever word games might constitute for them some type of airtight logic, it is the logic that Lewis Carroll made so popular in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and that leads to absurdity while also leaving behind the living, breathing people that the law is designed to support and protect. Moreover, there is no legal support for [their] position.”

The brief, written by GLAD lawyers and Providence lawyer Lauren E. Jones, argued that a 1904 Rhode Island Supreme Court decision “squarely applies” to this divorce case. In “Ex parte Chase,” the Supreme Court said marriages performed in other states are considered valid unless they’re “odious to the common consent of nations, or if its influence is thought dangerous to the fabric of society, so that it is strongly against the public policy of the jurisdiction.” And GLAD argued that the “public policy exception” does not apply to this case.

The Family Research Council brief attacked the idea that Rhode Island does not have an “express ban” on same-sex marriage: “Following the logic of the appellants and their supporters, man/animal marriage and man/deceased woman marriage must be permitted under Rhode Island law simply because the General Assembly has not expressly prohibited it.”

A similar argument was made in an earlier brief filed by a dozen law professors and lawyers, including Brigham Young University law Prof. Lynn D. Wardle and Providence lawyer Joseph V. Cavanagh Jr.

That brief said, “Merely entering into a relationship and calling it a marriage does not make it a marriage.” The brief noted Abraham Lincoln “is said to have once asked how many legs a dog would have if you counted a tail as a leg. To the response ‘five legs,’ Lincoln said, ‘No, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.’ ”

The brief then said, “There are many kinds of relationships that are or may be deemed ‘marriages’ under the law of some other jurisdictions.” For example, the brief said, “A man or woman from Rhode Island might enter into an inter-species marriage in another jurisdiction (as permitted under tribal law, for instance), or might marry a corpse or dead person (as reportedly allowed in France).”

In its response brief, GLAD said the Wardle brief was “resorting to a kind of ‘slippery-slope’ argument.” And, GLAD said, “it is beyond the time when it is acceptable in American law to analogize the legal marriages of same-sex couples to ‘inter-species’ marriages, prostitution and ‘marrying dead bodies’ and expect that argument to carry the day to obliterate these parties’ marriage.”

A Providence appellate lawyer, Thomas R. Bender, filed a response brief, saying that more than half the friend-of-the-court briefs don’t address the fundamental question of “whether or not this case presents an actual case or controversy.”

Bender noted there is no dispute between the two women about the certified question that the Supreme Court faces, and he argued that “answering the certified question is not within the constitutional jurisdiction of this court or any other Rhode Island state court, because it does not constitute a case or controversy necessary for the constitutional exercise of judicial power.”

efitzpat@projo.com