The U.S. state of Alabama started marrying gay and lesbian couples on Monday, after a failed last-ditch attempt by the state's top court to stop authorities from handing out marriage licenses to homosexual partners.

On Monday, Supreme Court justices threw out an appeal by the state's attorney general to stop same-sex marriages until the nation's highest court decides whether these unions are constitutional.

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One of the first couples to line up for the wedding is Dee Bush, 40, who got her marriage license in Birmingham, Alabama. She married Laura Bush, her partner of seven years, in a park near the courthouse.

Bush said she wanted to mark the historical milestone.

On late Sunday, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court made an eleventh hour effort to keep marriages between lesbian and gay couples from happening.

The conservative magistrate ordered probate judges in the state to refuse giving marriage licenses to homosexual partners. The judges were not covered by a federal rule that, last month, lifted Alabama's ban on homosexual marriages.

Judge Callie Granade of the U.S. District Court, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, both ruled in January that Alabama's prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional but put her decision on hold until Monday.

A duo of the Supreme Court's most vocal justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, dissented from the court's decision to let gay marriage in Alabama.

In April, the U.S. judiciary was scheduled to hear oral arguments in cases involving marriage bans in Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

At the time of the 2013 ruling, only 12 states had authorized gay marriage.

In June 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive federal marriage measure, that would allow federal benefits and the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples.

Judges in the U.S. later took on words in the tribunal's decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, to invalidate a series of state bans.