State issues marriage licences to gay couples

City clerks began handing out marriage-license applications to gay couples today, making Massachusetts the first US state to legalise same-sex unions.

The first couple to begin filling out the paperwork was Marcia Hams, 56, and her partner, Susan Shepherd, 52, of Cambridge.

They arrived a full 24 hours ahead of the midnight Sunday opening time to stake out the first spot in line where the city clerk handed out the first state-sanctioned gay marriage applications.

“I’m shaking so much,” Ms Hams said as she filled out the application while sitting at a table across from a city official. “I could collapse at this point.”

Outside, throughout the day and into the night, the atmosphere was festive - complete with a giant wedding cake – as officials in the liberal bastion of Cambridge seized the earliest possible moment to begin the process of granting same-sex couples the historic right at the centre of legal battles nationwide.

The state’s highest court had ruled that gays and lesbians must be allowed to marry beginning today, and some of the couples in line planned to head to the courts as soon as they opened later in the morning to seek waivers allowing them to wed before the usual three-day waiting period.

Massachusetts was thrust into the centre of a nationwide debate on gay marriage when the state’s Supreme Judicial Court issued its narrow 4-3 ruling in November that gays and lesbians had a right under the state constitution to wed.

In the days leading up to today’s deadline for same-sex weddings to begin, opponents looked to the federal courts for help in overturning the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling. On Friday, the US Supreme Court declined to intervene.

The Massachusetts court ruling touched off a frenzy of gay-marriages across the country earlier this year, emboldening officials in San Francisco; upstate New York and Portland, Oregon to issue marriage licenses as acts of civil disobedience.

Even though courts ordered a halt to the wedding march, opponents pushed for a federal constitutional ban on gay marriage, which President George Bush has endorsed.

The Supreme Court’s ruling also galvanised opponents of gay marriage in Massachusetts, prompting lawmakers in the heavily Democratic, Roman Catholic state to adopt a state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage but legalise civil unions.

As of today, Massachusetts joins the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada’s three most populous provinces as the only places worldwide where gays can marry, though the rest of Canada is expected to follow soon.

Opponents of gay marriage planned protests today and promise to continue to fight the state high court ruling and to pursue state and federal amendments banning gay marriage.

Both sides in the debate say the issue may figure prominently in the November elections across the country.

Candidates for Congress could face pressure to explain their position on a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.