A largely Asian American and Christian crowd of more than 7,000 rallied Sunday in San Francisco's Sunset District to protest the legalization of same-sex marriage, saying it goes against the Bible and threatens the future of families and society.

Most were dressed in identical red T-shirts with the slogan, "Marriage/1 man + 1 woman" in English and Chinese. Protesters fanned out along 19th Avenue, between Quintara Street and Holloway Avenue, asking motorists to honk in favor of keeping marriage exclusively for heterosexual couples. Many did, but most just drove by.

"We're not here today to antagonize or to hate people, we're here with true love and true concern," Thomas Wang, of the Great Commission Center International, a South San Francisco missionary organization, said to the sun- soaked crowd at Larsen Park. "God created one man and one woman -- Adam and Eve. They became husband and wife and the first human family began. ... We believe any deviation from it will bring disastrous results.''

Wang said legalizing same-sex marriage would eventually lead to polygamy, multipartner marriage and incest. "It is something that is going to happen unless we do something about it now," he said.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, saying that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights as everyone else, decided to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in February. The city issued about 4,000 licenses from Feb. 12 until March 11, when the state Supreme Court ordered a halt to the practice.

Billed as a rally to showcase support among Christians in all ethnic communities, most of the organizers and the majority of participants were Chinese Americans. The instructions were written in Chinese and English and the crowd was addressed in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Organizers said the event drew members of more than 150 Bay Area churches.

Organizers said they wanted to emphasize a positive message in favor of traditional marriage and asked participants to refer all reporters' questions to official spokespeople. Joy Kao of San Francisco's Chinatown, who was with a group from the Chinatown Presbyterian Church, said, "We don't feel (same-sex marriage) is a threat, we're just here to voice our opinion," she said. "It's not good as an example for the children.''

No one representing groups in favor of same-sex marriage appeared at the rally, possibly because it was not publicized much outside the Chinese and conservative Christian communities. But James Parr, a gay man from the Richmond District who spent part of his childhood in northern China, heard about the event and came to present his views in one-on-one conversations at the periphery of the crowd.

"I feel a lot of pity for them," said Parr, who speaks Mandarin. "I think they've been fooled by their religious leaders. The reality is that what we want is exactly what they have. If we really want to build strong families and marriage, we should open the institution up to everyone who wants to participate.''

The rally took some local residents by surprise. A handful of students from San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco stumbled onto the event, rushed home and brought back homemade signs saying, "Freedom isn't just for straight people" and "You're kidding, right?"

Phil Busbee, an organizer and the pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Francisco, said he is well aware of the challenges of representing traditional Christian values in a city so closely identified with gay culture and personal freedom.

"We recognize we're not the dominant culture in the city of San Francisco and that causes us to be more humble and reasonable and puts us in a place of dialogue rather than dictation," he said. "We're not coming at it with pride and arrogance and demanding. ... We think our ideas deserve consideration.''