Back in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not deny to any couple of the same sex the right to marry and must recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions. This overruled the 2006 Virginia constitutional law defining marriage as only between one man and one woman, and that same-sex marriages from other states are not valid here.
Passage of Amendment 2 on our ballot this November would result in Virginia law becoming compliant with national law and allow same-sex marriage. Since 2015 Virginia has been required to follow the national ruling, so the state constitutional amendment has been powerless and unenforceable anyway. This current vote on Amendment 2 would make Virginia’s constitution consistent with federal law.
This action would be very similar to what happened with Virginia’s interracial marriage law. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s law banning marriage between white and non-white people. Virginia residents Richard Loving, who was white, married Mildred Jeter, who was Black and Native American, in 1958 in Washington, D.C. They were arrested when they returned to Virginia, convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. The Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law, reversing this conviction as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decision resulted in men and women of different ethnicities being legally allowed to marry anywhere in the U.S. The Virginia law prohibiting interracial marriage was eliminated.
Now, we again have an inconsistency between federal law on who can get married and Virginia law. Of course, federal law prevails on all inconsistencies. Thus, at least at some level, our current vote is only to clean up our Constitution. But it is worth thinking about what marriage means, and why the government is even involved.
Marriage has both legal and religious meanings. To many, marriage is a cultural and religious celebration, and many people want to publicly announce their commitment to one another and to their beliefs through a religious ceremony.
Nothing in this new law will change this. Churches will still be able to make their own rules regarding who they will marry.
It does allow that everyone has the right to get married – so a same-sex couple can get married anywhere that will marry them (e.g. a civil ceremony, a church that performs same-sex marriages). It does nothing to limit the power of a church to marry people.
From the government’s perspective, marriage provides legal status important to civil society. A married couple is a single economic and legal unit.
Assets, such as property, are jointly owned. The married partner is next-of-kin – often vital in making end-of-life and medical decisions. The couple can file taxes jointly.
It makes life simpler for everyone – individual couples and government. Many committed couples – and not just same-sex couples – get married only because it is so helpful. They see little value in announcing their personal commitment through recognition by anyone other than themselves.
Many in our region favor limiting the role of government. The Supreme Court’s 2015 decision preventing states from disallowing personal marriage decisions provides a strong example of government getting out of the way – not telling people what they can do with their personal lives. This does not take away from a marriage between a woman and a man. It does not tell a church what to do. It simply makes the civil contract associated with marriage available to any couple. This right has already been established at the national level, and passage of this amendment will clean up Virginia’s law to be consistent with what it already must do.
