SEATTLE (AP) – Left-leaning Seattle joined the marriage equality fight, with the mayor announcing that City Hall will recognize unions of gay and lesbian city employees who tie the knot elsewhere and six gay and lesbian couples suing for the right to wed.

Mayor Greg Nickels issued an executive order requiring the city to recognize same-sex marriages by municipal employees.

“Seattle has often been in the forefront of protecting all its citizens regardless of sexual orientation,” Nickels said at a news conference. He also proposed an ordinance to extend protections for gay and lesbian married couples throughout the city.

Meanwhile, six same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses at the King County Administration Building were rejected because of a state law that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

But King County Administrator Ron Sims invited the couples to sue him and the county, explaining that he supported the couples’ efforts but had no choice but to uphold the law.

Sims, who is black, said he remembered images from his childhood of white government officials in the South blocking blacks from entering buildings restricted to whites.

“I was not going to stand with my arms crossed and my hand up,” Sims said. “We do not have equal protection in this state when it comes to marriage.”

The couples applauded Sims’ remarks, then filed their complaint, which argues that the law violates the Washington Constitution’s equal-protection clause.

Elsewhere, the city of Asbury Park, N.J., started issuing wedding licenses to gay and lesbian couples, with the first couple married in City Hall by Deputy Mayor James Bruno.

“As a show of support to the city’s gay community and the gay community nationwide, the City of Asbury Park has determined that it will commence the issuance of licenses to same-sex couples and the solemnization of marriage between same-sex couples, immediately, as a matter of fundamental civil and Constitutional rights,” City Clerk Dawn Tomek said in a statement.

Attorney General Peter C. Harvey told The Associated Press that his office will seek an injunction to stop the issuance of such marriage licenses.

In Portland, Ore., supporters of same-sex weddings won a legal battle when a judge ruled that the state’s most populous county can continue issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The Defense of Marriage Coalition filed a lawsuit against Multnomah County, saying officials had violated the state’s public-meetings law by not holding public meetings before making a policy change. But Judge Dale Koch denied a request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail under the state’s public-meeting law.

Nickels said he lacks the legal authority to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples or certificates like mayors in San Francisco and New Paltz, N.Y., have done.

More than 3,600 same-sex marriages have been performed in San Francisco, and hundreds of gay and lesbian couples have been granted wedding licenses in Portland, Ore. The marriages are being challenged in court.

New Paltz Mayor Jason West faces possible jail time for officiating at marriages for gay and lesbian couples that lacked a license. The prosecutor who charged him said he was also considering charges against two ministers who stepped in to marry gay and lesbian couples in New Paltz.

Although Unitarian Universalist ministers have been performing ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples for decades, the Rev. Kay Greenleaf said she signed an affidavit for the couples and considers the ceremonies civil. Seattle has offered domestic partnership benefits to its employees since 1989, but that process requires extensive paperwork – a step gay and lesbian couples would be able to skip under Nickels’ executive order.

Nickels also said he will ask the city council to protect gay and lesbian married couples throughout the city from discrimination in employment and housing. If the council approves the ordinance, it also would require contractors doing business with the city to recognize marriage for gays and lesbians among their own employees.

Rick Forcier, head of the state Christian Coalition and a critic of extending marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, called the mayor’s plan a clear violation of state law.

“What he’s about to do is anarchy – taking the law into his own hands,” Forcier said. “People cannot be recognized as married in one jurisdiction and not in another.”