news-record.com

GREENSBORO -- Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen and 10 other people filed a lawsuit last week that challenges a requirement that marrying couples in North Carolina obtain a state-issued license.

The complaint, filed in Guilford County Civil Superior Court on Dec. 8, names state Attorney General Roy Cooper as the defendant. The plaintiffs include three Greensboro ministers and seven heterosexual and homosexual residents from Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Mocksville.

They argue in the complaint that state general statutes violate the U.S. Constitution and the principle of separation of church and state by requiring marrying couples to seek marriage licenses, by requiring religious leaders to fill out and sign them, and by prohibiting religious leaders from solemnizing the marriage of same-sex couples.

The complaint comes about five months before North Carolinians vote on a proposed amendment to the state constitution that bans same-sex marriage. The referendum will occur during the May Republican primary.

The complaint reads, "In order (to) adequately and fully protect the personal liberty and religious freedom of citizens of North Carolina and the United States, there must be a de-coupling and disentanglement of the state from the personal and religious institution of marriage. The institution of marriage should be solely in the dominion of citizens and their religious and secular organizations, except that the state should be permitted to carry out prohibitions of marriage for infancy, insanity, bigamy or polygamy, and incest, and marriage as a result of fraud, duress, joke or mistake; and the state should be permitted to adjudicate rights relating to support, child custody, and property in connection with marriages and their dissolution."

Read more in Wednesday's News & Record.