Oregon's ban on same-sex marriages was struck down Monday by U.S. District Judge Michael McShane, who ruled that the prohibition violated the federal constitutional rights of gays and lesbians.

Jubilant couples who anticipated a favorable decision from the judge began the rush to officially wed at locations around the state. McShane ordered that his ruling take immediate effect.

"Because Oregon's marriage laws discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without a rational relationship to any legitimate government interest," McShane wrote in his decision, "the laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Deanna Geiger and Janine Nelson, two of the plaintiffs in the case, were the first couple to marry in Multnomah County following the ruling.

Oregon becomes the seventh state where a federal judge has struck down a gay marriage ban since the U.S. Supreme Court last year invalidated key sections of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Unlike in the other states -- Idaho, Utah, Michigan, Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas -- there was no one with the immediate standing to appeal the decision.

"Limiting civil marriage to opposite-gender couples based only on the traditional definition of marriage is simply not a legitimate purpose, he added.

McShane, one of only a few openly gay federal judges in the country, said during a hearing last week that he could rule without bias in the case and that he had no personal or political interest in the issue of same-sex marriage.

He ended his opinion by talking about how Americans of his generation -- he is 53 -- grew up "in a world in which homosexuality was believed to be a moral perversion, a mental disorder, or a mortal sin."

As a result, he said, it is not surprising that "many of us raised with such a world view" would seek to "enshrine in law those traditions we have come to value. But just as the Constitution protects the expression of these moral viewpoints, it equally protects the minority from being diminished by them."

He concluded:

I know that many suggest we are going down a slippery slope that will have no moral boundaries. To those who truly harbor such fears, I can only say this: Let us look less to the sky to see what might fall; rather, let us look to each other ... and rise.

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-- Jeff Mapes