Same-sex couples can marry today in Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – City clerks began handing out marriage-license applications to gay couples early Monday, making Massachusetts the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex unions and the United States just one of four countries in the world where homosexuals can legally wed.

The first couple to begin filling out the paperwork Marcia Hams, 56, and her partner, Susan Shepherd, 52, of Cambridge, who showed up at midnight Saturday – a full 24 hours ahead of time – to stake out the first spot in line where the city clerk was to hand out the nation’s first state-sanctioned gay marriage applications.

“I feel really overwhelmed,” Hams said as she and Shepherd filled out the application for a marriage license. “I could collapse at this point.”

As they filled out the paperwork, Hams’ adult son stood behind them and watched.

The couple sat at a table across from a city official, filling out the application for a marriage license. Wearing a yellow sweater with a rainbow-colored triangle, Hams said: “I’m shaking so much.”

Outside throughout the day and into the night, the atmosphere was festive – complete with a giant wedding cake for couples who had waited in line outside City Hall for hours – 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 center of legal battles nationwide.

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

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

The Massachusetts ruling touched off a frenzy of gay marriages across the country earlier this year, emboldening officials in San Francisco, upstate New York and Portland, Ore., 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 Bush has endorsed.

The ruling also galvanized opponents of gay marriage in Massachusetts, prompting lawmakers in this heavily Democratic, Roman Catholic state to adopt a state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage but legalize Vermont-style civil unions. The earliest it could wind up on the ballot is 2006 – possibly casting a shadow on the legality of thousands of gay marriages that could take place in the intervening years.

As of Monday, 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.

Across the state on Sunday, gay-rights advocates held “Countdown to Equality” parties to celebrate the impending nuptials and to keep attention focused on the political fights ahead.

“I have a younger crowd of friends and I wanted to create some awareness,” said Josiah Richards, who was hosting a barbecue for about 35 people in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood on Sunday.

Several churches held ceremonies honoring gay parishioners and recognizing the fight they’ve waged for marriage rights.

Robert Compton and David Wilson – one of the seven plaintiff couples in the lawsuit that led to the state court’s landmark ruling – attended services at Arlington Street Church in Boston a day before they will exchange vows in the church.

Monday marks the culmination of a legal battle by the couples that began in April 2001 after they were denied marriage licenses. Clerks in the state’s 351 cities and towns have made plans to bring in volunteers and expand their work space in anticipation of a deluge of couples.

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

Out-of-state gay couples, meanwhile are likely to challenge the state’s 1913 marriage statute, which Gov. Mitt Romney, a gay-marriage opponent, has cited to limit marriages to only Massachusetts residents. The law, which gay-rights advocates have labeled discriminatory, bars out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts if the union would be illegal in their home state.

Several local officials, including those in Provincetown, Worcester and Somerville, have said they will not enforce Romney’s order and will give licenses to any couples who ask, as long as they sign the customary affidavit attesting that they know of no impediment to their marriage.

In Provincetown, visitors were greeted with a sign that read “Congratulations, newlyweds!”

“It’s the next evolution in the history of marriage,” said John Yarbrough of Minnesota, who traveled to Provincetown to marry his partner, Cody Rogahn. “The idea of who you love shouldn’t be dictated by the government.”

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Peter and Martin Finucane in Boston and Matt Pitta in Provincetown contributed to this story.

AP-ES-05-17-04 0012EDT