"To challenge the legitimacy of the commitment ceremonies we would have had to form a policy against it," she said.

And according to Gila Reinstein, a Yale spokesperson, "Yale has not issued a policy specific to same-sex services but the overarching policy would apply."

According to Gomes, change at Harvard requires more deliberation.

"Things happen slowly here, but they also happen with a degree of self-consciousness which is both a blessing and a curse," he said in an interview this summer.

Some have termed Gomes' approach to the decision cautious. James M. Slayton, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, whose 1993 request to use Memorial Church sparked the initial controversy, said he believes that Gomes might have approached the issue cautiously because of controversy over a Civil War monument almost two years ago.

Gomes advocated recognition of war dead on both sides but when President Neil L. Rudenstine withdrew support for this position, Gomes was left "holding the bag," Slayton said.

Others have speculated that Gomes was made cautious by some unfavorable campus reaction when he disclosed his own homsexuality at a 1992 rally protesting an issue of the conservative publication Peninsula that attacked homosexuality on biblical grounds.

After Gomes announcement, a group called Concerned Christians at Harvard was formed and there was at least one open call for his resignation.

But Gomes said that his progress toward a policy was not influenced by concern about criticism.

"If I were afraid of criticism, this would be the wrong job," he said. "There are easier ways to make a living."

He also said Harvard required a more systematic approach to the ceremonies than Brown because the relationship of chapel and university is different than that between Memorial Church and Harvard