Lesbian partners Marcia Hams (left) and Susan Shepard celebrate in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Reuters)

Boston, May 17 (Reuters): The first gay and lesbian couples were legally married today and hundreds more waited for their turn to make history as Massachusetts became the only US state to allow same-sex marriage.

However, President George W. Bush renewed his call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage today.

“The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate,” the Republican President said in a written statement.

Tearful well-wishers packed the pews at a Boston church to watch the wedding of Robert Compton and David Wilson, one of seven couples whose 2001 lawsuit led to last year’s court order permitting same-sex marriage.

Both men got choked up as they exchanged vows before the Reverend Kim Crawford Harvie of the Arlington Street Church, a Unitarian Universalist congregation that is among the few religious groups performing gay weddings.

“By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Crawford Harvie said, interrupted by raucous applause and stomping feet. “I now pronounce you partners for life. You are legally married.”

Outside the church, the newly betrothed couple hailed he election-year milestone, which is likely to fuel legal and political battles nationwide.

“This is a great moment for equality and liberty that will have tremendous significance for families across the country,” Compton said. Earlier in Boston, florists hauled in buckets of long-stemmed red roses under grey skies and police officers set up barricades as hundreds of gay couples snaked past dozens of photographers and camera trucks to get their licenses at City Hall.

The first gay marriages came on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision ending segregation in public schools, and many see the gay marriage issue as the major civil rights issue of the modern age.

Gay marriage opponents generally kept a low profile as hundreds prepared to wed, but a handful of anti-gay protesters turned out with signs like: “God Hates Fags” and one conservative activist said a “death certificate” had been issued for the institution of marriage.

“We’ve engaged in a social experiment that was thrust upon us by some judicial activists,” said Kristian Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute. “The people never got a vote and I believe it is the result of political tyranny.”

Thousands of same-sex couples were married in San Francisco earlier this year, but the marriages were not recognised by the state of California. A mayor in New York state is being prosecuted after performing gay marriages in February.

The issue has catapulted Massachusetts into the national spotlight in an election year with its junior senator, Democrat John Kerry, challenging Republican President George W. Bush for the White House. Both oppose gay marriage.

The final hurdle was cleared on Friday when the US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute legal challenge filed by conservative opponents of same-sex weddings.

Some may be given to out-of-state gay couples who come to Massachusetts in defiance of Republican Governor Mitt Romney, who has told them to stay home amid fears his state could become “the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage.”

In Provincetown, two gay men from Anniston, Alabama, were among the first out-of-state couples to wed and said they would try to have their union recognised back home — a move likely to wind up in court.

Citing a 1913 state law that prevents Massachusetts from marrying any couple if the marriage would be “void” in their home states, Romney’s administration has warned clerks they can issue licenses to out-of-state couples only if they plan on settling in Massachusetts.