TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – Three same-sex couples in Tampa and Orlando have sued to overturn Florida’s ban on same-sex marriages.

Sue Clayton and Sheila Serrao of Sarasota sued Hillsborough County Clerk of Court Richard Ake for enforcing the state law after they were denied a marriage license. Their attorney, Ellis Rubin, has represented other same-sex couples in similar lawsuits in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Later in the day, two gay couples in Orlando, James Merritt and Albert Leach Jr., and Alvie Beckham and Mack Wright, filed a similar lawsuit against Orange County Clerk of Courts Lydia Gardner.

Merritt and Leach, who have been together for nine years, tried to get a marriage license last February, the day before Valentine’s Day, but were turned away by clerks at the Orange County Courthouse. Beckham and Wright weren’t present at the filing of the lawsuit.

“We don’t think there is anything that our marriage can do to harm marriage as it currently exists today,” Merritt, a minister at the Joy Metropolitan Community Church in Orlando, said before filing the lawsuit. “It is not OK for the Florida Legislature or the governor or the president of the United States to legislate how we can love each other.”

“Let the word go out from Tampa to the rest of the nation that an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped,” Rubin said.

Flanked by both local and national gay rights activists, Rubin said during a news conference the lawsuit asks a judge to declare Florida’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional. Florida law defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Ake said clerks have no choice but to deny same-sex couples a marriage license.

“The statute is very clear,” he said. “It’s not a judgment issue and it’s not a moral issue.”

Matt Staver, an attorney with the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel and among the authors of Florida’s Defense of Marriage Act, said he does not think the lawsuits will succeed.

Clayton and Serrao have been a couple for nine years after meeting at church. They had a commitment ceremony in a church six years ago, during which Serrao said she wore a white gown and her father walked her down the aisle in what she calls her “dream wedding.”

The couple, who were also denied a license in Sarasota County, said they are seeking the same legal benefits of marriage, including Social Security, tax deductions and rights of survivorship benefits, which are automatically afforded to men and women who marry.

“The fact we are two women does not diminish our love nor does it diminish God’s love for us,” said Clayton, a librarian.

The lawsuit also took on political overtones as both Rubin and gay-rights activists pledged that such cases would help mobilize votes against Bush in his re-election campaign.