NEW YORK (AP) – Thirteen gay and lesbian couples sued New York State April 7, seeking to have the law that denies same-sex couples the right to marry declared unconstitutional.

“This is a momentous occasion,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “This case is about ending the discrimination that is currently written into the marriage laws of New York, so that gay and lesbian couples and their children can count on the rights and responsibilities that they need in order to look out for each other.”

The NYCLU, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, filed the lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Albany on behalf of the 13 couples, who included state Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell and his partner, John Banta.

“We have been a couple for 23 years, and yet currently under New York law, we are not permitted a marriage license,” said O’Donnell, who joined most of the other plaintiffs at a Manhattan news conference announcing the lawsuit. “The time has come for that to end.”

The suit filed against the state Department of Health charges that state health regulations defining marriage as between a man and a woman violate the state constitution’s equal protection, privacy and due process provisions.

Many of the couples had hoped to be married by New Paltz Mayor Jason West, who now faces misdemeanor charges for officiating at 25 same-sex weddings.

Jeanne Vitale, who lives in New Paltz with her partner, Amy Tripi, joked, “For us, this battle can be summed up in two words: wedding presents.”

Wade Nichols, a graduate student at Columbia Teachers College, attended the news conference without his partner, Francis Shen of Taiwan, who cannot apply for U.S. citizenship as a legal spouse could.

“We’re a very, very committed couple, and we plan to be together forever and we hope that some day we’ll be able to be recognized by at least my government as a legal couple in this country,” Nichols said.

The lawsuit is one of several that have been filed in New York since the debate over same-sex marriage was spurred by President Bush’s support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and by the actions of some elected officials to begin performing the ceremonies.

The mayor of Nyack, his partner and nine other same-sex couples filed suit last month against the state and the town clerk who denied them marriage licenses.

O’Donnell’s sister, former talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell, and her partner, Kelli, flew to San Francisco to get married after Mayor Gavin Newsom began marrying gay and lesbian couples there.

But Daniel O’Donnell, an Upper West Side Democrat, has no plans to follow suit.

“I’m a native New Yorker,” he said. “I was born here, I was raised here. I went to school here, I work here, I pay taxes here. ... I want to get married here in Manhattan – at the Plaza! I’ll take a free wedding.”