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WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to Massachusetts' gay marriage law, leaving intact a state court ruling that has led to thousands of weddings for same-sex couples and a national debate on the issue.

Without commenting, the justices declined to hear the case filed by the Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based group that opposes gay rights and sought to overturn the 4-3 ruling by Massachusetts' highest court a year ago.

Massachusetts is the only state in the country that gives gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. About 3,000 couples have married there so far. Same-sex couples are suing for the right in California, New Jersey, New York and Washington state.

Voters in 11 other states, including Utah, recently approved referendums forbidding gay marriage, and the Texas Legislature next year will consider two bills that call for amending the state constitution to bar such marriages.

President Bush has said amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage will be a priority during his second term.

''Activist judges are seeking to redefine marriage for the rest of society, and the people's voice is not being heard in this process,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday. ''That's why the president is committed to moving forward with Congress on a constitutional amendment that would protect the sanctity of marriage.''

David Buckel, marriage project director of Lambda Legal, a New York-based gay rights organization, said the bottom line in the national gay rights controversy is that no one is being harmed by same-sex marriages in a state.

''For more than six months, same-sex couples in Massachusetts have been getting married, and nobody else's marriage has been affected,'' he said. Massachusetts continues to have the nation's lowest divorce rate.''

The Supreme Court waded into the gay rights debate in June 2003, when it sided with two gay men from Houston and threw out the nation's remaining sodomy laws. Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it is ''a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.''

Since that decision, the justices have twice refused to get involved in the gay marriage fight. In May they declined to block clerks in Massachusetts from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

On Monday, they declined to consider a rarely used argument that the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government was violated by activist judges usurping the authority of the Massachusetts Legislature.

The Supreme Court decides a case when at least four justices vote to accept it. Monday's refusal came without a statement of how many justices, if any, wanted to take the Liberty Counsel's appeal.

Neither side in the case was surprised that the court declined to take it, partly because the court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases that come before it each year and routinely rejects cases without saying why.

The case was ''a weak and misguided legal effort from right-wing anti-gay groups that never really stood much chance,'' Buckel said.

Erik Stanley, chief counsel for the Liberty Counsel, said he was disappointed his group would not get a chance to convince the justices that the Massachusetts court is ''out of control and needs to be reined in.''

The group brought the case to the Supreme Court on behalf of Robert Largess, vice president of the Catholic Action League in Massachusetts, and 11 state lawmakers. The group persuaded the high court this year to decide the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on government grounds. That case involves a display at the Texas Capitol.

Stanley vowed to continue the legal fight on other fronts and predicted the issue will return to the Supreme Court.

''This decision means more litigation over same-sex marriage,'' he said. ''More people will marry [in Massachusetts], and when they move to other states they will ask those states to recognize their marriages. This is a national problem that calls for a national solution.''

Mitchell Katine, the Houston lawyer who represented Tyron Garner and John Lawrence in the Texas sodomy case, said the Supreme Court eventually will decide the gay marriage issue. For now, he said, the court may be giving the Massachusetts law some time to percolate to see what happens.

''Eventually, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether marriage is a fundamental right of all citizens,'' he said. ''But they have already done that in 'Loving v. Virginia.' ''

In that landmark 1967 decision, the high court threw out state prohibitions on interracial marriage.

Opponents of gay marriage say there is no comparison in the two issues because the 'Loving' case involved a union of a man and a woman.

Next year, Massachusetts voters may have a chance to rewrite their state constitution to ban same-sex marriage while allowing civil unions that would give gay and lesbian couples the same legal benefits as married heterosexuals.

Moving on to another gay rights issue, the Supreme Court is expected to decide by year's end whether to accept a case challenging a Florida law that prohibits gay and lesbian residents from adopting children.