"Children are entitled to a mother and a father who honor their marriage vows and live together in complete fidelity."

So said Val Stevens, a conservative state senator from northwest Washington, who was ripping into same-sex marriage as I wandered the grounds of the State Capitol on Tuesday with Amy Jenniges, my lesbian coworker and lawfully wedded wife. (We married last year to demonstrate the absurdity of Washington State's anti-gay-marriage laws--I can't marry the man I've lived with for 10 years and adopted a child with but I can marry a woman I've never kissed.) Amy and I were surrounded by thousands of anti-gay demonstrators on an unusually sunny day. There were full-scale wooden crosses, Christian flags, and mobs of families with small children. One of the most common signs at the rally was one that read, "God's Plan: One Man + One Woman = Marriage." There was no shortage of Bibles at the rally outside the Temple of Justice, home of the Washington State Supreme Court, but I doubt many in the crowd were familiar with the bits of the Old Testament that endorse polygamy or advocate stoning adulterers.

Of the gay and lesbian couples already getting married across the border in Canada, Stevens announced that many had already filed for divorce. "There's no true dedication to being together for the rest of your lives," she said. Canadian gays and lesbians are merely marrying "to diminish the value of marriage," before moving on to other ways to "diminish the family." The crowd went wild. Divorce, Stevens implied, is unknown among heterosexuals. But facts are bothersome things: Half of all heterosexual marriages end in divorce, with divorce rates being higher among Christian conservatives than they are among liberal atheists. Massachusetts, the blue-state home of legal gay marriage, has the lowest divorce rates in the country, and the 10 states with the highest are all anti-gay red states. So much for "values voters."

When the arguments against gay marriage were presented inside the Temple of Justice at 1:30 p.m., the Bibles, Christian flags, crosses, prayers, and biblical arguments that dominated the rally were nowhere to be seen or heard. God was not mentioned once during the hour and a half that the court was in session. Gone were the highly selective readings of infamous Bible passages. But we did hear a lot about children in the sweltering, high-ceilinged chamber. To defend Washington's Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, lawyers arguing against gay marriage had to convince the court that there's a compelling state interest in denying same-sex couples the right to marry--one that had nothing to do with the Bibles being tossed around by the demonstrators outside the building.

And what's the state's interest? Children--kinda, sorta.

"There is no history and tradition of same-sex marriage in the State of Washington," said William Collins, one of the anti-gay-marriage lawyers. "There's always a first," one of the justices shot back, prompting Collins to move on to the crux of his argument: "Society needs to deal with the challenge that heterosexual intercourse presents," he said. "A child may result from heterosexual intercourse and society needs… a coping mechanism, [a way] to channel heterosexual conduct into marriage." Collins' point seemed to be that marriage exists solely to compel heterosexuals to care for their children, that it has no other purpose.

When one of the justices asked Collins if the state should be able to force heterosexual couples who conceive to marry, he said no. "In a free society," Collins continued, "individuals are allowed to make choices. The state doesn't force that decision. [But] it can provide incentives."

If this is the best the state's got--marriage exists to protect children and channel heterosexual intercourse toward child-rearing--then the state's in big trouble. As Patricia Novotny, one the lawyers representing the gay and lesbian couples suing for the right to marry, reminded the court, in previous rulings the court identified cohabitation, duration, and mutual support--not children--as the defining characteristics of marriage.

By the end of the arguments in the sweltering chamber, the legal (that is, secular) arguments against gay marriage were on shaky ground. Perhaps the lawyers arguing against gay marriage would have been better off (and more honest about the whole thing) channeling the Bible-thumpers outside. After all, the religious argument is the actual argument of the anti-gay-marriage crowd. Unfortunately for the bigots, the fact that it's irrelevant was made all too clear by the choices their attorneys made inside the courtroom today. We don't live in a theocracy. Yet.