PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The House Judiciary Committee hearing on this year's version of legislation allowing for gay marriage in Rhode Island is entering its third hour of testimony.
The committee has already heard testimony from political leaders including Governor Chafee and religious leaders on both side of the issue.
Some 300 people have signed up, but a number of those do not intend to speak.
Civil rights has been a theme throughout the later part of the hearing.
Labor union advocates, including representatives from the AFL-CIO, teachers, building trades and auto workers unions, argued that gay marriage is a civil rights and workers rights issue.
Later, Michael Silva, a high school history teacher testifying with other pro gay marriage teachers, cited the landmark 1960s U.S. Supreme Court case striking down laws prohibiting interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia.
He said when he teaches his students about this case, they are shocked. "Unfortunately that is how this country was," Silva said.
He said he hoped future students would see gay marriage similarly.
But some black and Latino opponents of gay marriage objected.
Dorris Adiyi called it a "huge disgrace" to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and persons of color to conflate gay marriage with civil rights.
They and others called sexuality "learned behavior" and not something beyond a person's control, such as one's race, color or ethnicity.
Myra Shays, of PFLAG, or Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, drew laughs when she argued that the country doesn't need a "Defense of Marriage Act" to protect the institution from gay couples, but from heterosexual couples "who would mock it."
She cited "drunk couples" that get married in Las Vegas chapels and then get divorced the next day, as well as Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who recently married a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.