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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina, October 16, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A North Carolina Register of Deeds accepted “marriage” license requests from eleven same-sex couples on Monday in a well-orchestrated pro-gay publicity stunt, flouting a 2012 amendment to the state constitution prohibiting such marriages.

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Video footage shows Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger taking information from same-sex couples for a license.

Footage captured by Asheville Citizen-Times includes Reisinger telling same-sex couples that they qualify for a license “for every reason under the law except your sexual orientation” and shows a pro-homosexual crowd in the deeds office lobby cheering the same-sex couples on, singing “love won’t be denied.”

The stunt was orchestrated by the “Campaign for Southern Equality”, a pro-gay organization that targets Southern license centers with a request to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple as part of its “We Do” campaign.

“Our task is to put pressure on laws that are morally broken and thus, ultimately, fragile,” said Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, United Church of Christ minister and Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, who is a North Carolina native.

“When we show up at marriage license counters across the South, we are acting from a lineage of civil rights organizing that focuses on resisting unjust laws in the locus of their enforcement,” she wrote in a piece last month titled How Resistance Will Change the South.

The demand by homosexual activists for state recognized “marriage” defies 61 percent of North Carolinians who voted in the 2012 marriage amendment that marriage is between one man and one woman, banning any other type of “domestic legal union” such as civil unions and domestic partnerships. Prior to this, same-sex “marriage” in the state was already illegal, but the measure added the ban to the state constitution.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who supports same-sex “marriage” and who opposed passage of the 2012 amendment, stated on Monday evening that marriage licenses for same-sex couples would not be granted.

“The State Constitution says that these marriage licenses cannot be issued, and this is the law unless the Constitution is changed or the court says otherwise,” said Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for Cooper’s office, to the Citizen-Times.

Talley revealed that there was “pending litigation against the State of North Carolina” over the 2012 amendment.

The attack on real marriage sweeping across the country in the last months does not come as a surprise to pro-family leaders.

In June the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that barred “married” homosexual couples from receiving federal benefits as unconstitutional. At the same time, the ruling allowed each state to decide for itself the definition of marriage. But with real marriage having lost its Federal protection, critics said that it would be a matter of time before homosexual activists brought the assault on marriage to the state level.

The push for gay “marriage” has often involved ignoring and defying democratically achieved laws, from President Barack Obama’s refusal to uphold DOMA to California Governor Jerry Brown’s refusal to appeal the decision of a lower court that threw out Prop 8, the 2008 voter-supported constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

The tactic of issuing illegal marriage licenses to same-sex couples was recently tried and proved unsuccessful in Pennsylvania, where last month a judge ruled that a county clerk does not have the authority to violate state law and issue marriage certificates to homosexuals.

In New Mexico, however, which has no law either allowing or outlawing same-sex “marriage”, homosexual activists were successful in obtaining marriage certificates from rogue county clerks. Because of the law’s ambiguity, activist judges began ruling that the state's commitment to fighting “discrimination” effectively legalized “marriage equality.” Same-sex “marriage” thus came to portions of New Mexico by judicial fiat.