“I just want to be here as part of history,” he said.

Lowell House Masters Diana L. Eck and Rev. Dorothy A. Austin joined the couples and their supporters who thronged the three floors of City Hall. The group varied widely in age and ethnicity, with women slightly outnumbering men.

Mayor Michael A. Sullivan opened the ceremony last night by noting that Cambridge had been at the forefront of gay rights before, voting previously to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and to establish one of the first domestic partnership ordinances.

“It is fitting that we come to this chamber tonight to celebrate an historical day in this Commonwealth, a day that extends rights and privileges and ends discrimination against gays and lesbians,” he said to applause.

In an invocation, Rev. Irene Monroe compared the beginning of gay marriage to past civil rights milestones such as Brown v. Board of Education and noted that rather than being pronounced husband and wife, couples could now choose to be pronounced spouse and spouse, husband and husband or wife and wife.

“But my favorite is this—I now pronounce you married,” she said, adding after a standing ovation, “under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

The ceremony also included songs by several community choirs, including a rendition of the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

Mary Bonauto of the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the lead attorney on behalf of the gay couples in the SJC case, spoke last night to a rousing ovation and chants of “Mary, Mary!”

“This decision was controversial in the eyes of some, courageous in the eyes of others,” she said of the court’s ruling. “But I think we will come to see that this decision was undoubtedly correct.”

DANCING IN THE STREETS

Outside, approximately 150 students joined members of the BGLTSA to show a festive solidarity for the couples awaiting licenses.

The procession began at the statue of John Harvard at 11:45 p.m., when Margaret C.D. Barusch ’06 addressed a cheering, singing crowd, composed largely of undergraduates and students from Harvard Law School, who then marched to City Hall accompanied by police officers.

Adam P. Schneider ’07, public relations chair for the BGLTSA, was sick but came anyway dressed in a coat and tie.

“Basically this is the culmination of our campus campaign for gay marriage,” said Schneider, also a Crimson editor. “We’re just going along to support all the happy couples who are being recognized as equals by not only their peers, but society as a whole.”

The crowd of supporters included seven members of the Harvard Republican Club (HRC), with two executive board members among them.