GAY COUPLE FILE SUIT FOR LICENSE: From the Raleigh News and Observer

A gay couple walked into the Durham County Register of Deeds Office on Monday and asked for a marriage license.

Richard Mullinax, 36, and Perry Pike, 41, were allowed to fill out the application. They handed it over and were politely denied a license. The couple of five years walked across the street to the courthouse and sued the county.

So began the Triangle's chapter in a national movement challenging bans on same-sex marriage. The Durham lawsuit contends that the county has to issue the marriage license, even though it would have only symbolic meaning. State law invalidates any claim of marriage between people of the same sex.

"Having an invalid license, to us, is a part of the process of having a public dialogue," Mullinax said in an interview Monday. Register of Deeds Willie Covington said the law gave him no choice and declined to express an opinion about same-sex marriage. "This isn't about me. It's about the law," said Covington, who was first elected in 1996. "Unlike some other states, the law is very clear in North Carolina, and I really don't see any loopholes. If I issued them a license, I could go to jail."

In North Carolina, registers of deeds must make sure a couple are at least 18, although they may be younger if certain conditions are met. They must ask whether the couple are related by a degree closer than first cousins. And they must ask whether either partner is currently married. If those qualifications are met, the law requires the county to issue a license, said Cheri Patrick, a Durham lawyer who filed the lawsuit for Mullinax and Pike.

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