A federal judge in Kansas City on Friday heard arguments in a case challenging the state's ban on gay marriage.

Kansas is the lone state resisting two separate Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rulings striking down gay marriage bans in Oklahoma and Utah. The court's rulings took effect earlier this month after the Supreme Court refused to hear appeals in the cases.

The ACLU of Kansas is representing two gay couples who wish to marry in Kansas. One of the couples, Donna DiTrani and Kerry Wilks, were denied a marriage license in Sedgwick County.

Assistant Attorney General Steve Fabert told U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree that the state's “double track marriage system” made it different from Utah and Oklahoma. Kansas is one of nine states, plus the District of Columbia, where a common-law marriage can be contracted.

However, a requirement to establish a common-law marriage in Kansas is the capacity to marry. Additionally, only two states currently recognize such unions when the spouses are of the same sex.

According to Kansas City Public Media, Doug Bonney, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, called the argument a “red herring.”

“The law forbids these committed loving couples from giving to each other themselves, their hands, their lives, their loves,” Bonney said after reciting the last stanza of Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road.

Crabtree did not say when he would issue his ruling.