Same-sex couples can marry today in Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – America will wake up Monday morning to a new definition of marriage.

“It’s about time,” said Marcia Hams, 56, who was No. 1 in line Sunday night outside Cambridge City Hall, where marriage licenses were to be issued to same-sex couples beginning at 12:01 a.m. Cambridge was to be the fist city in Massachusetts to issue state-sanctioned marriage licenses for same-sex couples.

Hams and her partner of 27 years, Susan Shepherd, 52, got in line 24 hours early, just to make sure nothing got in their way when Massachusetts became the first state in the country to allow gay marriages.

“We’ve had 27 years to think about this, and that is a long-enough engagement,” Shepherd joked. “Now’s the time.”

The state’s Supreme Judicial Court, in a 4-3 decision in November, ruled that gays and lesbians have a right under the state constitution to wed.

City and town clerks in Massachusetts will be allowed to begin accepting “Notice of Intention of Marriage” forms from gay couples Monday. Gay couples must receive a court waiver if they want to marry immediately because the state has a three-day waiting period.

Cambridge resident Arthur Lipkin, 57, and his partner, Robert Ellsworth, 43, were the fourth couple in line Sunday and plan to be married later this week.

“We consider our wedding a three-tier cake: political, romantic and practical,” said Lipkin.

Couples happily braved the rain and chill, saying that nothing would keep them from exercising their civil right to marry.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, an opponent of gay marriage, dusted off a 1913 law that bans out-of-state couples from getting marriage licenses in Massachusetts if the marriage would be invalid in their home state. No other state currently recognizes gay marriages.

But city clerks from Springfield to Provincetown said they do not plan to act as “marriage police.”

“Our kids want us to be married,” said Sue Hyde, 51, of Cambridge, who will marry her partner of 19 years, Jade McGleughlin, 42. The couple’s two children, Jesse, 11, and Max, 9, plan to join their parents at City Hall for the event.

“My kids’ friends tease them and say, “Your parents aren’t married, they’re not even real,”‘ said Hyde, the New England organizer for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Now my kids will be able to say, “Yes, they’re real. They’re married.”‘

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AP-NY-05-16-04 2121EDT