MOREHEAD, Ky. — An attorney for jailed Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis said Friday that the marriage licenses issued by her deputies to several same-sex couples earlier in the day are invalid.

“They are not worth the paper they’re written on,” Mat Staver said outside the Carter County Detention Center, where Davis is being held on a contempt charge.

Speaking at an afternoon news conference in Grayson, about 35 miles from the Rowan County Courthouse, Staver said: “Our position and the position of the clerk of Rowan County is that those licenses are void.”

The licenses issued to same-sex couples are not valid, Staver argued, because they were issued under the county clerk’s authority — but Davis has not granted that authority. The marriage forms did not bear Davis’s name because of her refusal to endorse them. Instead, the clerk’s office included a space for a deputy clerk to sign his or her name.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning sent Davis to jail and ordered the deputy clerks to issue licenses in her absence. A representative for Bunning could not be reached for comment Friday.

As the Lexington Herald-Leader noted, Rowan County Attorney Cecil Watkins has previously said that deputy clerks don’t need Davis’s approval to issue valid marriage licenses. Reached at his office Friday, Watkins declined to comment.

In other Kentucky counties, marriage licenses are routinely signed by a deputy, even though the clerk’s name appears on the form.

Staver’s remarks came more than seven hours after the opening of the Rowan County Courthouse, where Brian Mason was waiting behind a sign reading, “Marriage License Deputy.”

James Yates and William Smith entered the media-filled courthouse, hand-in-hand, and began the process of applying for a marriage license. Again.

They had been rejected five times previously, as Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to any couples since the Supreme Court declared in June that gay couples had constitutional right to wed.

By 8:15 a.m., Yates and Smith had obtained the $35 license.

Mason, the deputy clerk, congratulated the couple and shook their hands.

Yates and Smith hugged and cried.

“They got it!” a man shouted.

As the couple exited the courthouse, same-sex marriage supporters erupted in cheers, chanting: “Love won! Love won!”

Yates and Smith said they now have to set a wedding date. Then, they walked hand-in-hand to their car, followed by cameras and boom mikes.

Their successful attempt was followed by that of Tim and Mike Long, a couple who had obtained a name change years ago. There were cheers for the pair when they walked outside. A woman they didn’t know, who had traveled from Louisville, gave them flowers.

April Miller and Karen Roberts weren’t at the courthouse when it opened Friday. Miller had a morning class to teach at Morehead State University; Roberts had a migraine. But Miller and Roberts, who were among the couples who filed suit after Davis denied them marriage licenses, arrived later in the day, picked up their license and told reporters about their ceremony plans.

“I don’t want to be a hero — just a woman who got her marriage license,” Roberts said.

One day earlier, Davis was sent to jail by Bunning, who also ordered five of the six deputy clerks in the county to begin issuing marriage licenses to all couples. The deputies agreed, under oath. The exception was Kim Davis’s son, deputy clerk Nathan Davis.

Bunning, a federal judge, ordered the Kim Davis, 49, to be taken into custody for refusing in the face of multiple court orders to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Staver said she is expected to remain in the facility until at least Tuesday.

“I feel sorry that she’s there, but she done it to herself,” Tim Long said.

Davis’s attorneys planned to appeal a federal judge’s contempt order before the end of Friday, and to pursue writ of habeas corpus to have her released. “We will not allow her to continually sit here and have her constitutional rights violated or trampled,” Staver said.

Davis, an Apostolic Christian, has said repeatedly that she could not issue such marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs. Pressure on Davis intensified after the Supreme Court on Monday decided not to grant her a reprieve.

She consigned herself to jail Thursday, sparking a fresh round of legal wrangling and political calculation in the face of the most audacious display of defiance on the issue of same-sex marriage since the Supreme Court declared in June that gay couples have a constitutional right to wed.

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Washington Post staff writer Sandyha Somashekhar contributed to this report. Larimer reported from Washington.