Heinz Friedrich Harre, right, and his partner Reinhard Luechow were the first homosexual couple married in Germany.

BERLIN (AP) - German gay couples exchanged vows, rings and kisses Wednesday, celebrating a victory in their decade-old fight to claim rights once reserved for heterosexual marriages and bring the country into line with its neighbors.

Dozens of couples across the country tied the knot on the first day of new legislation pushed through by Gerhard Schroeder's center-left government, despite bitter opposition from some conservatives.

The first were Heinz-Friedrich Harre and Reinhard Lueschow, who embraced on the flower-strewn steps of the registry office in Hanover under a hail of rice and cheers from some 100 well-wishers.

"We want neither better nor worse treatment than heterosexual couples, but just the same," Lueschow, 40, said. He and his 48-year-old partner described the ceremony as "our marriage."

The law allows gay couples to register their unions at government offices and requires a court decision for divorce. Same-sex couples also will receive inheritance and health insurance rights given to married spouses.

The law was passed by the lower house of parliament last year, but the upper house - where the coalition of Social Democrats and Greens lacks a majority - voted to withhold some tax privileges granted to heterosexual couples.

Ceremonies also went ahead in Berlin, Hamburg, Duesseldorf and Magdeburg Wednesday, but couples in three states - Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hesse - will have to wait longer, as authorities there have delayed implementing the new law.

Bavaria, along with two eastern states, has complained to Germany's supreme court about the law, arguing that it violates constitutional provisions protecting marriage and the family. The court still has to decide on the complaint.

"Treating them practically the same damages that special status," said Hermann Regensburger, Bavaria's deputy interior minister. "Older people and those anchored in the church support our position."

Schroeder's spokesman, Bela Anda, said those concerns were groundless and appealed to laggard states to move ahead as quickly as possible. "This doesn't touch the special position of the family," he said.

The law brings Germany into line with countries such as Denmark, which was the first to grant rights to gay couples in 1989, and France and Sweden. It also underlines growing tolerance in a country where the Nazis persecuted gays, and where homosexual couples have been allowed to live together only since 1984.

In the United States, Vermont became the first state to recognize same-sex couples when it approved a civil union law last year. Another 34 states have adopted so-called "defense of marriage" laws, defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

In Berlin, the first couple to sign up for the new partnership pledged to fight on until they had obtained all the same rights as their straight counterparts.

"We are all equal, so we should be treated equally," said Angelika Baldow, 36, beaming in a dark suit outside the wood-panelled registry office at the town hall in the city's Schoeneberg district.

"It's only the first step in the right direction to complete equality," she said before exchanging rings with her partner and fellow Greens party member Gudrun Pannier. The couple, who met six years ago through a lonely hearts ad, will both be called Pannier from now on.