Same-sex couples looking to purchase a marriage license in Tuscaloosa County Monday morning were instead handed a summary of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore's order to probate judges prohibiting their issuance.

A small crowd gathered outside the courthouse doors Monday morning, eating donuts and sipping coffee as they waited for Probate Judge Hardy McCollum to open his office's doors at 8:30.

When the office opened, two women who both work at the Tuscaloosa Police Department entered together and asked for a marriage license. A clerk refused to issue them one and instead handed them a summary of the order Moore issued Sunday night prohibiting probate judges statewide from granting licenses to same-sex couples.

The couple, Tiffany Morrison and Melina Akers, said McCollum should be held in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Their next step, they said, was to travel to Jefferson County, where licenses for gay marriage were being granted Monday morning.

Shortly after, McCollum invited members of the media into an office and explained his decision, saying that in his opinion, he was bound to obey Moore's order.

"The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court gave some direct orders to the probate offices that we should not and are not to issue same-sex marriage licenses," McCollum said. "He being the chief administrative and judicial officer for the state of Alabama, we are held to his order and we're going to comply with his order. "

When asked to clarify his decision in light of other counties in Alabama opting to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples Monday morning, McCollum said it was his opinion that he was bound by Moore's order, and that decision would stand until he receives a clear directive from either Moore or the U.S. Supreme Court to change course.

Another couple, Alexandrea Davenport and Meredith Bagley, were not there for a new marriage license but instead wanted McCollum to recognize their existing marriage license, which they received in Vermont.

Bagley and Davenport both work for the University of Alabama and said they have lived in the Yellowhammer State since 2010.

They said they were married in the backyard of Bagley's parents' home in Vermont in August 2012, and brought the license from that marriage along with $44 cash to the courthouse Monday morning, hoping to be officially recognized as a married couple in the state of Alabama.

"For the last five years, we've been considered legal strangers to one another," Davenport said. "Today, we were hoping that right would be corrected and we would be recognized as married spouses who love, support and are committed to one another."

Davenport and Bagley said after reading about Moore's order, they suspected they'd be turned down at McCollum's office, but said they felt they owed it to LGBT pioneers of the past, present and future to be there and try as soon as the probate judge's office opened.

"The folks that aren't here today are what motivated me to be here," Davenport said. "It's for the folks who never got to walk up these steps and never saw this day develop and the conversations that have been around it, they're why I'm here. It's for the students I work with, for the kids growing up in Alabama who don't feel like they fit in the mainstream. I think as two folks who are fortunate enough to work somewhere where we are protected based on our sexual orientation -- we're comfortably out. I feel responsibility to those younger folks to take this step and to be here today.

A clerk in McCollum's office declined to register Bagley and Davenport's marriage in Alabama and instead handed them the summary of Moore's order.

The couple said they were disappointed, but planned to go to work, monitor the news and hope to have clarity in time for a wedding ceremony in Tuscaloosa this Saturday, on Valentine's Day.