Same-sex couples in Massachusetts may be able to be entitled to all the rights of marriage within months after the state's highest court issued an advisory on Wednesday that clarified a landmark ruling last year that said denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the state constitution rejected the lesser possibility of civil unions, which accorded partners some benefits of marriage.

The advisory came after legislators requested to know whether civil unions would satisfy the court after its November ruling which had left open the possibility that civil unions might be allowed. The legislature meets February 11 to vote on the matter.

The court opinion was made public Wednesday morning when it was read into the Senate record. In a four to three decision, the justices said a civil unions law "maintains an unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples."

"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," the four justices who ruled in favour of gay marriage wrote in the advisory opinion.

The court decided that a bill that would allow for civil unions, but falls short of marriage would establish "an unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples."

The state "has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples," the court wrote.

"Barred access to the protections, benefits and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community's most rewarding and cherished institutions."

The ruling sets the stage for next Wednesday's constitutional convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment which stipulates that "only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognised as a marriage in Massachusetts. Any other relationship shall not be recognised as a marriage or its legal equivalent."

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The proposed amendment has the support of President Bush as well as 100 bipartisan cosponsors in the House of Representatives, according to the Alliance for Marriage.

In a statement Wednesday night, President Bush condemned the ruling and called it "deeply troubling" but stopped just short of explicitly endorsing a constitutional amendment.

"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman," he said. "If activist judges insist on redefining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

President Bush who ardently supports limiting marriage to be between a man and a woman and a proposed amendment that would nullify state decisions like the one in Massachusetts called the and vowed to "do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

Randy Thomasson, head of a lobby group in California, Campaign for California Families, told the conservative Worldnetdaily: "[T]he Massachusetts ruling "shows why some judges need to be recalled or impeached."

"When four arrogant jurists in black robes literally dream up homosexual 'marriage' and impose their subversive plan upon the people, it is cause for patriotic men, women and voters everywhere to rise up and take back their government," he said.

Observers note that as the soonest a constitutional amendment could end up on the ballot would be 2006, so for now, same-sex couples could get married in Massachusetts as soon as May, the deadline set by the court last fall.

Currently, Vermont is the only state that allows civil unions, although other states including California allow a system of domestic partnerships that give very limited recognition to gay couples.