• Rep. Jamie Pedersen testifies in favor of his same-sex marriage bill while his child screams, "Noooooooooooooo!"

Moved up because the gay marriage portion is starting now.

The testimony will be moot, pretty much, because the Washington State House majority is already tied up to pass marriage equality. But it should provide a good show. Busloads of openly pro-discrimination, gay-marriage-causes-diseases, a-vote-for-gay-marriage-is-a-vote-for-NAMBLA nut jobs packed a morning senate hearing. But that didn't stop senator Mary Margaret Haugen from announcing immediately afterward that she would provide the key 25th vote to pass a marriage equality bill.

But the House Judiciary Committee hearing at 1:30 p.m.—which will cover same-sex marriage and a few other bills—must go on. And most likely, the anti-gay crazies will parade their nutty arguments again.

So watch it LIVE HERE.

To the testimony!

Lots of kids are screaming in the background. Dear everyone: Don't take your screeching kids to legislative hearings.

Hah! As the camera switches its gaze, it reveals that the disrespectful asshole who brought four of his yelling children is none other than Representative Jamie Pedersen, the sponsor of the marriage bill in the house. No one is paying attention to anything he says, of course, because the screaming kids are distracting everybody. One of the kids is drowning out the testimony of Pedersen and his partner by screaming, "Noooooooooooooooooo!" Good Jesus, gents, bring a photo instead.

Slog commenter HMRBEAR disagrees with me, writing this shows that "they have a normal family, including those with screaming kids! It's brilliant!" I must demur.

Attorney Stephen Pidgeon is taking issue with a provision in the bill to protect religious entities. "In my view, it doesn't," Pidgeon says. While the bill explicitly protects churches and other religious entities that refuse to provide certain services, Pigeon says, it provides a dangerous exemption with the word "unless." Specifically it was that churches may deny services "unless the organization offers admission, occupancy, or use of those accommodations or facilities to the public for a fee, or offers those advantages, privileges, services, or goods to the public for sale." In other words, Pidgeon argues, if the services are open to the public, a church could face discrimination charges.

Next up, Pastor Ken Hutcherson is angry that some lawmakers have drawn parallels between the civil-rights movement and the gay-rights movement. Rhetorically, he asks representatives if they believe gays have suffered the same type of discrimination has his family in Alabama. He's accusing them of believing they know better than god.

In short, Hutcherson sounds resigned that this legislation will pass.

A lesbian couple who are raising a daughter are next. After the detail the lives and parenthood that, by their account, is no different than straight people. Then the daughter spoke: "When my moms can't get married, it makes me feel like we're not being treated fairly. I think it should be fair for anyone who wants to get married to marry anyone who they want to get married to."

Following are a rabbi and a Lutheran bishop who both make the case to marry same sex couples as part of their religious liberty. The Lutheran asks lawmakers to take action "so that we can... deal with the realities of the relationships that bring up children, bring up people, and support this state."

Attorney Austin Nimocks is next, saying he's alarmed that lawmakers are considering "making the role of mother and father meaningless." He says government is only interested in granting marriage licenses to opposite sex couples, but never quite explains why. But he says, in essence, that marriage exists solely for the purpose of child rearing.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse from the Ruth Institute, who also spoke before the senate, also hammers on the need of a mother and father when raising a child. "Same sex couples don't procreate together," she says. "Marriage becomes the vehicles to separate a [child] from one of her parents."

Roback Morse goes on to say marriage equality would open the floodgate to "contract parenting" and children who "never care about their origins." In the future, she continues, we could look back on a society in which there is "no more mother and father, only parent one and parent two—all in the name of civil rights." She ends by calling same-sex marriage laws a "war against nature."

Dear readers: I stopped live-blogging the hearing because something unexpected came up—something on deadline for the dead-tree edition—that I had to work on. Also, I couldn't listen to the Bible-thumpers' absurd, trite bullshit any longer.