Both had survived a hellish descent into methamphetamine addiction, and had emerged from prison clean and sober. Both were ready to serve their five-year parole, with mandatory weekly drug-testing and counseling.

Any dreams of a reunion for the Montgomery County men quickly dissolved, however, when they learned they could not have any contact. Why? Because they weren't married or family in the eyes of the law.

Federal probation policy forbids felons on parole from associating in any way with other felons unless they are spouses or blood relatives. That meant, for the duration of their parole, no overnights, no visits, no phone calls, no letters, no e-mails.

No way, they said. While Mangini and Roberts acknowledge that their criminal background hardly makes them poster boys for a cause, their predicament prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to take up their case. On July 31, in a legal victory that could set an important precedent in constitutional law for same-sex couples, Judge Marvin Katz of U.S. District Court in Philadelphia ruled that the two men have the same right to associate during their probation as do heterosexual married couples.

"It's fair to say we're not role models, but that doesn't mean we should have less rights than anybody else," Mangini said in the couple's first interview. "We weren't going to take it without a fight."

Leslie Cooper of the ACLU, a co-counsel in the case, said the ruling could have significance equal with the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws.

"It's important that the court recognizes that gay couples are entitled to the same protection of their relationships as heterosexual couples enjoy," said Cooper, staff attorney for the ACLU's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and AIDS Project.

The government had argued that Mangini and Roberts should be able to resume their relationship, but gradually and under supervision, to avoid "whatever temptations and mistakes" had led to their criminal acts. Under the U.S. attorney's plan, the couple would have been limited to one 12-hour visit and two phone calls per week for at least six months. At that point, they could have requested more contact.

Technically, Katz's ruling is not binding because the case did not reach the appellate level, Cooper explained. For that to happen, the government would have to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which would have to uphold the decision. Robert A. Zauzmer, assistant U.S. attorney, said the government had no plans to appeal.

Still, Cooper said, Katz's decision "ought to be very persuasive" to courts facing similar issues "because it was such a well-reasoned, well-written opinion."

By all measures, Mangini and Roberts are an unlikely couple.

Mangini, 42, a St. Joseph's University graduate and onetime senior executive at John Wanamaker, comes from a solid middle-class family in Wilmington. Roberts, 43, is a child of abuse who was living on the streets of Philadelphia at 13.

"When we got together, everybody said it wouldn't work," said Mangini, the duo's verbal alpha male. "We were brought up in two different worlds."

The two met in 1985 at a gay men's bar in Center City. At the time, Mangini, a St. Joe's sophomore, was dating another man. Roberts, then a waiter in Norristown, was seeing a woman and had never been to a gay bar before, said.

There was chemistry. Mangini brought Roberts home with him that night "and he never left."

Living in a rowhouse in South Philadelphia in the early 1990s, the out-of-the-closet couple had "an Ozzie and Harriet life," Mangini said. They were known as "the boys" around the neighborhood, Roberts said.

"People liked us. They made us gravy and meatballs. If I had a flat tire, they argued about who would change it," he said.

Both men had solid jobs. Like most couples, their biggest arguments were about money. They went clubbing and did what they considered recreational amounts of meth, but only on weekends, they said.

All that stopped around 1995, when Roberts' 13-year-old niece, Christina, was placed with them as a foster child by the city's Department of Human Services.