State Rep. Bob McDermott contends Circuit Judge Karl Sakamoto erred when he refused to block Hawaii’s new same-sex marriage law and is asking Sakamoto to reconsider.

McDermott filed his request Tuesday.

He also asked Sakamoto to hold a hearing before Monday, when the law takes effect and when the state Health Department said it will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Sakamoto scheduled the hearing for Jan. 13.

The state Department of the Attorney General opposed moving up the hearing to Friday. In papers filed in response to McDermott’s request, the attorney general says the hearing should not be rushed and that McDermott will not suffer irreparable harm without an expedited hearing.

McDermott agrees he will not suffer harm individually but, "If we prevail, the state is going to have a mess on their hands."

He said he is encouraged that Sakamoto did not dismiss or deny his motion without a hearing. He also said if Sakamoto again rules against him, he will appeal.

Sakamoto ruled on Nov. 14 that state lawmakers and Gov. Neil Abercrombie did not violate the Hawaii Constitution when the lawmakers approved legislation to allow for same-sex marriages and Abercrombie signed the bill into law. He ruled that a constitutional amendment voters approved in 1998 to give the Legislature the power to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples does not prevent lawmakers from choosing not to exercise that power by enacting legislation allowing same-sex marriages.

McDermott says the plain language of the amendment and the voter information the state Office of Elections disseminated in 1998 makes it clear that voters believed they were voting to ban same-sex marriages when they voted for the amendment.

The federal court struck down another challenge to Hawaii’s same-sex marriage law this week.

C. Kaui Jochanan Amsterdam filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Monday to prevent the state from enforcing the law. Amsterdam, who says he is a full-blooded Native Hawaiian and descendant of Hawaiian royalty, says Abercrombie and state lawmakers violated their trust responsibility to Native Hawaiians as spelled out in the Hawaii Admission Act, which made Hawaii the 50th state in the union.

Amsterdam claims that the majority of native Hawaiians and majority of non-Hawaiians who testified on the same-sex marriage bill at the state Capitol earlier this month opposed it.

U.S. District Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway dismissed Amsterdam’s lawsuit Tuesday for failing to state how the law would injure him or how it violates the Hawaii Admission Act of 1959.