The Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium director and the city's mayor both say they followed state law when they denied a gay married couple a family membership.

"She just told us that our marriage wasn't real," Shane May said, when describing what happened while questioning an employee on his family membership inquiry. The story was first reported by the Cuyahoga Falls News-Press.

The couple, Coty and Shane May, were married in Washington D.C. on October 28. Shane May says he and his spouse were "shocked" by the employee's response.

Falls Mayor Don Robart joined the 1590 WAKR Ray Horner Morning Show Tuesday and pointed to state law when it comes to creating and enforcing its membership policy.

"It clearly specifies that we don't recognize same sex marriages," he said.

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Robart says making an exception would open to the door to possible abuses of its membership policy.

"People are living together, they have kids, like LeBron James, but they're not married," Robart said. 

"They want the family rate and quite frankly, we've tried to standardize, we've tried to be consistent and we try to offer, as we said, every possible combination that we can."

Meanwhile, Shane May says he tried calling the mayor regarding the matter, but was turned away by a female secretary.

"She said that we were able to talk to the mayor, asked what the issue was about that we were calling for, we told her and she then proceeded to tell us that 'unfortunatley he wasn't able to answer questions like those at this time'," May said.

May says he started a petition that is now circulating on Facebook via Change.org.