In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Q: Same-sex couples in Maryland were greeted with cheers and noisemakers held over from New Year's Eve parties, as gay marriage became legal in the first southern state on New Year's Day. 
  
 Darcia Anthony, left, and her partner, Danielle Williams, chat before participating in a marriage ceremony at City Hall in Baltimore, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. Same-sex couples in Maryland are now legally... (Associated Press) 
  
 James Scales, left, and William Tasker react after participating in a wedding ceremony at City Hall in Baltimore, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. Same-sex couples in Maryland are now legally permitted to marry... (Associated Press) 
  
 James Scales, 68, who has worked for the Baltimore mayor's office for 25 years, was married to William Tasker, 60, on Tuesday shortly after midnight by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake inside City Hall. 
  
 "It's just so hard to believe it's happening," Scales said shortly before marrying his partner of 35 years. 
  
 Six other same-sex couples also were being married at City Hall. Ceremonies were taking place in other parts of the state as well. 
  
 The ceremonies follow a legislative fight that pitted Gov. Martin O'Malley against leaders of his Catholic faith. Voters in the state, founded by Catholics in the 17th century, sealed the change by approving a November ballot question. 
  
 "There is no human institution more sacred than that of the one that you are about to form," Rawlings-Blake said during the brief ceremony. "True marriage, true marriage, is the dearest of all earthly relationships." 
  
 Brigitte Ronnett, who also got married, said she hopes one day to see full federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Maryland, Maine and Washington state were the first states to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote, in November, a development Ronnett said was significant. 
  
 "I think it's a great sign when you see that popular opinion is now in favor of this," said Ronnett, 51, who married Lisa Walther, 51, at City Hall. 
  
 Same-sex couples in Maryland have been able to get marriage licenses since Dec. 6, but they did not take effect until Tuesday. 
  
 In 2011, same-sex marriage legislation passed in the state Senate but stalled in the House of Delegates. O'Malley hadn't made the issue a key part of his 2011 legislative agenda, but indicated that summer that he was considering backing a measure similar to New York's law, which includes exemptions for religious organizations. 
  
 Shortly after, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore wrote to O'Malley that same-sex marriage went against the governor's faith. 
  
 "As advocates for the truths we are compelled to uphold, we speak with equal intensity and urgency in opposition to your promoting a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith, not to mention the best interests of our society," wrote O'Brien, who served as archbishop of the nation's first diocese from October 2007 to August 2011. 
  
 The governor was not persuaded. He held a news conference in July 2011 to announce that he would make same-sex marriage a priority in the 2012 legislative session. He wrote back to the archbishop that "when shortcomings in our laws bring about a result that is unjust, I have a public obligation to try to change that injustice." 
  
 The measure, with exemptions for religious organizations that choose not to marry gay couples, passed the House of Delegates in February in a close vote. O'Malley signed it in March. Opponents then gathered enough signatures to put the bill to a statewide vote, and it passed with 52 percent in favor. 
  
 In total, nine states and the District of Columbia have approved same-sex marriage. The other states are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. ||||| In the 17 years since Katie Cleary and Sharon Dongarra locked eyes in the kitchen of an Arby's restaurant, they have shared a first, tentative kiss, traded letters across continents, set up a home, exchanged vows before family and friends, signed a host of legal documents and nurtured a young daughter.The couple has shared nearly every experience that can bond two people, except for one. Until today.But just after midnight, the two women pledged themselves to each other yet again in their Towson home, becoming one of the first same-sex couples to be legally married in Maryland."After 17 years, we might as well do it the very moment we can," said Sharon Dongarra, 37, a chiropractor. New Year's Day marks the culmination of years of work by gay and lesbian Marylanders and their allies to persuade state legislators, and later voters, to support full marriage rights for same-sex couples. The General Assembly approved same-sex marriage in 2012, only to have opponents petition it onto the ballot in the November election.The Dongarras — Katie legally changed her last name to Sharon's a couple years ago — were exuberant when Maryland, along with Maine and Washington, became the first states in which voters approved extending marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.The next day, Sharon Dongarra recalled, she got teary-eyed watching Katie help their daughter, Lucy, into the car. "I remember thinking, 'She will not remember a time when her moms were considered second-class citizens in Maryland,' " she said.The couple was one of dozens planning a New Year's Day wedding ceremony. Partners of 29 years exchanged vows on the roof of their Harborview home as fireworks rocketed over the Inner Harbor . The doors of Baltimore's City Hall opened just after midnight to host the weddings of seven couples. And an Eastern Shore inn was preparing to host 50 weddings throughout the day — including one for the inn's owners.John Kyle and Pete Satten planned to mark their 23rd anniversary as a couple with an intimate wedding at a Brewers Hill restaurant. The pair had posted a sign in support of Question 6 — the ballot question that authorized same-sex marriage — in front of their stone house in Bolton Hill months ago and planned to affix a "Just Married" sticker on it after the ceremony.Even as couples were arranging flowers and cupcakes for their ceremonies, others were planning protests. The ultra-conservative Westboro Baptist Church, known for picketing high-profile funerals with signs saying "God hates" gay people, has received permits to rally in front of courthouses in Towson and Annapolis on Wednesday, police said.Meanwhile, parishioners of St. Anne's, the 300-year-old Episcopal church across from the Annapolis courthouse, were planning a counter-protest the same day to "bear witness to the good news of God's unconditional love.""We will not engage them. But we will speak our message of love more loudly," Joe Pagano, the associate rector of St. Anne's, wrote to parishioners. "Come and join us and let us show the world that the love of Jesus is more powerful than hate."For those who came of age during earlier eras, the fact that same-sex marriage could be legal in Maryland — and nine other states — seems nearly too good to be true.When Michael Williams, 53, and Clifton Scott, 61, met on Feb. 4, 1984, the two men never dreamed that they would one day marry — or that they would be together 29 years later. Williams and Scott were at a bar in Indianapolis when Michael Jackson's "Thriller" — the year's top song — began to play.Scott asked Williams to dance, and the two men instantly felt a powerful bond."I knew as soon as I met him," said Scott, a human resources director. "Did we even date? We were very committed from the beginning."Williams, a neurologist, said the couple's exuberance was tempered by his family's reluctance to accept that he was gay."My parents came down to Indianapolis the summer after we met," he said. "It was very hard for them. My mother cried. My dad got mad and stayed mad for a couple years."But in time, Williams' parents grew to embrace Scott. The couple attended holiday gatherings and family vacations together. Their nieces and nephews, born after the men fell in love, think of them as inseparable. |||||
A: 
New Year's Eve parties overlapped with Maryland's first same-sex marriage parties as 2013 began in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon line to legalize gay marriage. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake married 68-year-old mayor's office employee James Scales to his male partner of 35 years shortly after midnight, when the law came into effect, the AP reports. "There is no human institution more sacred than that of the one that you are about to form," she said during the brief ceremony. "True marriage, true marriage, is the dearest of all earthly relationships." In November, Maryland, Maine, and Washington became the first states to approve gay marriage by popular vote. Dozens more same-sex weddings are due to take place across the state today, although protests against gay marriage are also planned, the Baltimore Sun reports. The Westboro Baptist Church has received permission to protest outside the courthouse in Annapolis, but the Episcopal church across the street plans a counter-protest to "bear witness to the good news of God's unconditional love."