“It’s a clear, well-settled proposition that businesses who open the door to the public must serve the public,” said Evan Wolfson, the president of Freedom to Marry, an organization advocating same-sex marriage. “We don’t want Americans walking into businesses and being turned away because of who they are — that’s what nondiscrimination principles mean.” But the defenders of the shop owners argue that creating an artistically involved or personalized service for a same-sex wedding is a form of expression that should not be compelled by the government. They reject the discrimination charge, noting that many of the businesses have gay and lesbian customers, and, in some cases, employees.

LAKEWOOD, Colo. — Jack Phillips is a baker whose evangelical Protestant faith informs his business. There are no Halloween treats in his bakery — he does not see devils and witches as a laughing matter. He will not make erotic-themed pastries — they offend his sense of morality. And he declines cake orders for same-sex weddings because he believes Christianity teaches that homosexuality is wrong.

Mr. Phillips, whose refusal two years ago to make a cake for a gay male couple has led to a court battle now getting underway, is one of a small number of wedding vendors across the country who are emerging as the unlikely face of faith-based resistance to same-sex marriage.

The refusals by the religious merchants — bakers, florists and photographers, for example — have been taking place for several years. But now local governments are taking an increasingly hard line on the issue, as legislative debates over whether to protect religious shop owners are overtaken by administrative efforts to punish them.

In Colorado, where Mr. Phillips, 58, owns and operates a small bakery called Masterpiece Cakeshop, the State Civil Rights Commission determined that Mr. Phillips had violated a state law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in places of public accommodation. The commission ordered Mr. Phillips to retrain all of his employees, who include his 87-year-old mother, and to produce a quarterly report detailing any refusals to bake; in response, he has stopped accepting orders for any wedding cakes while he appeals the ruling to the state courts.

“I do like doing the wedding cakes,” he said. “But I don’t like having the government tell me which ones I can make and which ones I can’t make, and trying to control that part of my life.”

In New York, an administrative law judge fined Cynthia and Robert Gifford $13,000 for declining to rent their upstate farmhouse, which they often rent out for heterosexual weddings, for the wedding of two women. The couple paid the fine but, in an action similar to that taken by Mr. Phillips, has stopped accepting reservations for any weddings while appealing.

There have been more than a half-dozen other instances of business owners, most citing their understanding of Christian faith, declining to provide services for same-sex weddings. They include a photographer in New Mexico, a florist in Washington State, a bakery in Oregon, an inn in Vermont and wedding chapels in Idaho and in Nevada. And new cases continue to arise — over the last few weeks, a wedding planner in Arizonadeclined to work with a lesbian couple, and a business in California refused to photograph the wedding of a gay male couple (and then closed its doors after an outcry).

The cases are largely being fought, and some say fueled, by two legal advocacy organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union, which supportssame-sex marriage, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, which opposes it. Each side cites bedrock American principles: First Amendment rights of religion and speech versus prohibitions in 21 states against discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation.

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