Yesterday, the Maryland state Senate heard testimony about a pending bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. According to Metro Weekly, 150 people showed up to testify over the six hour hearing. A sampling of opinions aired at yesterday's event, from "men and women still comprise the two great halves of humanity" to "it's not like they're from outer space":

FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: 10-year-old Bena Williams, in support of her parents: ''It's not like they're from outer space."

AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: "Marriage is about children and the good of society,” said Martha Schaerr, the Montgomery County School Board candidate who lobbied to  teach children about the dangers of anal sex. “To change it to adult love changes the definition of marriage.”

FOR: Maryland Black Family Alliance rep Darrell Carrington:''Discrimination is wrong no matter who the victim is.''

AGAINST: ''The reason that marriage is a virtually universal human social institution that reoccurs again and again in different cultures, and different religious backgrounds, is that humanity recognizes that we need a special institution to bring together a male and female to make and raise the next generation,'' National Organization for Marriage rep Maggie Gallagher said. ''To get to gay marriage requires that we repudiate this as a public purpose of marriage . . . way that we can give our children the benefit of a mother and father in a single family is to first pledge to a permanent, faithful, sexually exclusive union of man and woman.''

FOR:  ''With the imminent repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, we will now be able to serve openly," Army veteran Gina Foringer testified. "It is time for this state to provide the same freedoms that the military community is now seeking to provide us. We fight for freedom. Let us have it.''

AGAINST: Austin Nimocks, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund: “The legislation before you is inconsistent with the purposes of Maryland’s marriage laws," the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based attorney testified. "Men and women still comprise the two great halves of humanity."

FOR: “That term [partner] cheapens our relationship,” Maryland state Sen. Richard Madaleno testified of his civil union. “It makes it sound like we are simply in business together . . . It is a badge of dishonor I must wear every day whenever I introduce Mark to anyone or even talk about him to someone who does not know us, because my state refuses to grant us civil marriage. I would never ask any of you to relegate your wives or husbands to being only your ‘partners.’”

AGAINST: Republican state Sen. Nancy Jacobs, "an opponent of same-sex marriage," questioned whether the legislation "would permit businesses—such as bakers of wedding cakes—to refuse to cater same-sex weddings if such unions deeply offend their religious beliefs."

FOR: Democratic state Sen. Jamie Raskin testified that "shops in his Takoma Park district are now losing potential revenue as gay couples in the city spend their wedding dollars in neighboring Washington, D.C., where same-sex marriages are legally performed."

AGAINST: Derek McCoy, president of the Association of Maryland Families: "Your concerns should not be on pandering to the political mood of the day . . . Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

FOR: Maya Deane-Polyak, 14, the daughter of two moms: “My moms do everything for me,” Deane-Polyak said. “They create such a normal, extraordinary life for me.”