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PHOENIX — The dust-up in the Senate debate over gay marriage on the last night of the legislative session has one lawmaker seeking to have another one formally reprimanded.

In a complaint filed Monday, Sen. Ken Cheuvront, D-Phoenix, said Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, used his position to illegally interrupt debate, and then purposely ignored legal protests.

Cheuvront said Harper's maneuver, designed to pave the way for a debate on a measure to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage, was part of an intentional plan to violate Senate rules.

Cheuvront acknowledged that the reprimand he seeks would have no actual effect, especially now that the Senate is adjourned for the year.

But Cheuvront said if lawmakers who abuse the rules are not called to task, it will only encourage Senate leadership to ignore other rules in the future.

The incident arose as Cheuvront and Sen. Paula Aboud, D-Tucson, were tossing questions back and forth about a provision in a tax bill.

The pair, both of whom are openly gay, were engaged in a sort of filibuster to keep the Senate from getting to another piece of business on the evening's agenda — deciding whether to put a measure on the November ballot to constitutionally define marriage in Arizona as between one man and one woman. At least one supporter of that proposal had plans to leave, a move that would have left it without the necessary votes for approval.

Generally speaking, any senator can speak for as long as he or she wants or ask questions of other senators. The only time that practice is limited is when lawmakers vote ahead of time to limit debate, something that did not occur in this case.

Harper, who was sitting in the chair for the Senate floor debate, interrupted the dialog and then recognized Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor, R-Gilbert, who moved to table further debate.

And when Cheuvront called for a "point of order," which is essentially a legal objection that is supposed to stop all other discussion, Harper did not recognize him.

A Senate attorney later concluded Harper had violated the rules but also concluded that at that point it was too late to go back and fix the problem.

Cutting off discussion of the tax measure cleared the way for the vote on gay marriage, which passed with the bare minimum 16 votes necessary to put it on the ballot.

"If we can't respect the rules, how can we expect people to respect the rules that we pass for them?" Cheuvront said.

Harper did not immediately return calls seeking comment. But he told the Arizona Capitol Times he considered the conversation between Cheuvront and Aboud "dilatory," and they had no right to retain the floor.

Harper and Verschoor both are supporters of the constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Arizona already has a law, approved in 1996, that bans gay marriages. And the state Court of Appeals has previously rejected a constitutional challenge to the law.

But proponents of the constitutional amendment, on the ballot as Proposition 102, said the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn that state's statutory prohibition on same-sex marriages shows the need to have the ban in the constitution itself.