North Carolina's Buncombe County register of deeds, Drew Reisinger, announced on Monday that he would accept applications for marriage licenses from same-sex couples.
Reisinger told the Associated Press he'd have to get an opinion from one of North Carolina's top lawyers on the gay marriage issue, due to a 2012 ban that defined marriage between a man and a woman as the only valid "domestic legal union" in the southern state.
"I am more than willing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but I want to have the legal clarification of my attorney general Roy Cooper," Reisinger said.
Reisinger explained that the reason behind this attempt to shift legislation in North Carolina stemmed from his having to turn away scores of "upstanding citizens" who applied for legal same-sex marriages. He felt it wasn't fair to have to deny people of matrimony.
"I was frustrated turning down marriage licenses from upstanding citizens from my community again and again. I had a handful of friends come into my office and request licenses, and we had to deny them specifically because of their sexual orientation," Reisinger told AP. "And I just didn't feel like it was fair anymore. It reached a point where if we can legally grant marriage licenses to gay people, we would like to do that."
But the first response from the attorney general's office was that Reisinger could not trump the state's law and grant licenses.
Spokesperson from the attorney general's office Noelle Talley told AP in a statement that "these marriage licenses cannot be issued."
"This is the law unless the Constitution is changed or the court says otherwise," Talley wrote in the release. "This very issue is the subject of pending litigation against the state of North Carolina."
Representatives from gay rights group The Campaign for Southern Equality have been travelling to North Carolina counties in efforts to find any official who will grant marriage licenses for LGBT couples, as part of its "We Do" campaign, according to AP.
Three couples living in the Charlotte area applied for marriage licenses last week at the Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds, but they were turned away.
