Washington DC City Council votes to legalize gay marriage

Gay couples could begin tying the knot in the district as early as March. The only hurdles left to clear are the city's mayor, who has promised to sign the bill, and Congress, which has final say over laws in the nation's capital. The district's nonvoting delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said she expects no opposition there.

"Make no mistake, 2009 has been one hell of a year for marriage equality," said David Catania, who introduced the bill and is one of two openly gay council members.

Council members said that it was symbolic that the nation's capital had voted to pass gay marriage. But the city is also in many ways not representative of the nation. More than three quarters of the voters in the city of 600,000 are registered Democrats.

Patrick J. Egan, a professor of politics at New York University, called the city "the most liberal and Democratic-party-dominated jurisdiction in the United States."

Congress now has 30 working days to act on the bill, but it has rejected legislation just three times in the past 25 years.