Homosexuals 'marry' in Massachusetts

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Hundreds of homosexual couples in Massachusetts yesterday received the nation's first state-sanctioned marriage licenses, amid joyous celebrations, weddings and music.

Yesterday's events were a culmination of a three-year battle to legalize same-sex "marriage" in the state led by plaintiffs Hillary and Julie Goodridge

"Next to the birth of our daughter, this is the happiest day of our lives," Julie Goodridge said.

"It's exhilarating, it's absolutely thrilling, it's overwhelming. I'm so happy," Hillary Goodridge said.

Traditional-values leaders, however, lamented the events as a "truly dark day" and urged Americans to fight to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

President Bush said the institute of marriage shouldn't be defined "by a few activists judges."

"I have called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today," Mr. Bush said.

"May God help us," said leaders of the Campaign for California Families, a nonprofit group seeking to preserve traditional marriage in California.

Same-sex "marriages" in Massachusetts began just after midnight yesterday when officials in Cambridge opened their doors almost nine hours early to issue marriage licenses.

By 9:15 a.m., one of the first same-sex couples was married: "Now by the power vested in me by the state of Massachusetts as a justice of the peace, and most of all by the power of your own love, I now pronounce you married under the laws of Massachusetts," Margaret Drury, city clerk of Cambridge told Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52.