The Associated Press called Virginia Question 2 for the yes side Tuesday night, Nov. 3, WTVR reported, clearing the way to strike the 2006 same-sex marriage ban from the state constitution. “Tonight, Virginia voters have affirmed that our Constitution should reflect the Commonwealth we are today, not the discriminatory policies of our past,” said Del. R. Kirk McPike of Alexandria, co-chair of Virginians for Marriage Equality, according to 12 On Your Side.
Richmond’s WRIC, which had a photographer at the Virginians for Marriage Equality watch party, also reported the AP call, noting that interracial marriages get the same protection. “By removing this outdated provision and affirming marriage equality, Virginians have taken an important step toward ensuring that every family is treated with dignity, fairness and respect,” McPike said in the statement reported by 12 On Your Side.
The amendment rewrites Article I, Section 15-A, which still says “only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth,” according to the current constitution. Mary Bauer, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, which urged a yes vote, put out a statement after the call. “In a Commonwealth whose history bears the deep scars of injustice, this victory belongs to every Virginian who refused to accept that history as our destiny,” Bauer said.
The yes vote doesn’t change anything right away, VPM News reported. “I am a lesbian, married 21 years,” Dina Persico, a Chesterfield voter, told VPM on Tuesday. “But it was simple to me because it really wasn’t changing much. It’s just protecting the language.”
Gayety’s live results hub is tracking the rest of tonight’s results.
What Virginia Question 2 Changes in the Bill of Rights
“Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to (i) remove the ban on same-sex marriage; (ii) affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race; and (iii) require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law?” the ballot asked, according to the Virginia Department of Elections.
The new Section 15-A, which Gayety’s Oct. 28 explainer laid out, opens by calling marriage “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.” Those words come from Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 ruling that opened marriage to interracial couples across the country. “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote. (Virginia lost that one.)
Under the new language, the state can’t “deny the issuance of a marriage license to two adult persons seeking a lawful marriage” over sex, gender or race. The Commonwealth, it says, “shall recognize any lawful marriage between two adult persons and treat such marriages equally under the law.”
The law placing Question 2 on the ballot sets Jan. 1, 2027, as the amendment’s effective date. Election results still must be certified, and the legal challenge described below remains a separate issue. Under Article XII, an approved amendment “shall become part of the Constitution on the date prescribed by the General Assembly in submitting the amendment to the voters.”
Spanberger at Babe’s of Carytown: ‘Right a Past Wrong’
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, rallied for a yes vote on Saturday, Oct. 31, at Babe’s of Carytown in Richmond, joining the Human Rights Campaign and Equality Virginia to get out the vote, WTVR reported. “It would speak to the fact that when given the opportunity to right a past wrong of our Commonwealth, that the people of Virginia take it,” she said.
She said a Supreme Court decision protects the right to marry for now, but the ban sitting in the state constitution still “casts a bit of a shadow.” “It means a lot to me as a person. It means a lot to me because I have many friends who are married under the shadow of that ban,” Spanberger said.
Radio IQ caught her making the same case to the crowd. “Over, over and over again, Virginians want to ensure their neighbors, friends, loved ones, have the ability to be married and for that marriage to be protected in our communities and also in our state constitution,” Spanberger said.
How Virginia’s 2006 Marriage Ban Became Unenforceable
Voters approved the ban, known as the Marshall-Newman Amendment, on Nov. 7, 2006, The Cavalier Daily reported the next morning. “When we fought to pass the original Marriage Amendment two decades ago, we made sure it was done the right way,” Victoria Cobb, president of the conservative Founding Freedoms Law Center, said in an Oct. 26 announcement.
A 2-1 federal appeals court ruling in Bostic v. Schaefer struck the ban down on July 28, 2014, and same-sex marriage became legal in Virginia that Oct. 6, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal, WDBJ reported. “I think it’s about making sure our constitution reflects the values of Virginia’s people,” McPike said of Question 2, according to FOX 5 DC.
Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, made the ban unenforceable, though its text stayed in the constitution, the Department of Elections explains. “If the Supreme Court were to overturn its previous decision, that prohibition would be enforceable again,” the department’s explanation of Question 2 says.
Justice Clarence Thomas floated revisiting Obergefell in 2022, when the court overturned Roe v. Wade, and his suggestion pushed activists toward this amendment, WJLA reported. Article XII made lawmakers pass it a second time after “the next general election of members of the House of Delegates,” and Mark Sickles, then a Democratic delegate, introduced this year’s House version, Ballotpedia shows. The court did turn away Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who refused licenses to same-sex couples, when she asked it to overturn Obergefell in November 2025, FOX 5 DC reported.
Earle-Sears and Sturtevant Fought the Amendment Over ‘Gender’ and Faith
“Why include gender?” former Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears asked about the amendment’s wording, according to VPM News. She and other opponents warned that the word would widen legal protections for transgender people in sports and restrooms, VPM reported in October. Religious organizations bankrolled the no side, VPM reported Tuesday night, and a lot of its messaging went after transgender people and invoked children.
“By stripping that language out of the constitution, it potentially has the ability, with a crafty enough lawyer, to begin coming after people of faith,” Republican state Sen. Glen Sturtevant of Colonial Heights told a crowd at The Chapel in Midlothian, Radio IQ reported.
Opponents also said it fell short on religious freedom, WJLA reported, because a line protecting clergy who decline certain marriages was dropped from the text. “We like to say Virginia is for lovers, but we’re also for families, and that includes all families,” McPike said, according to FOX 5 DC.
Virginia law already allows religious organizations and clergy acting in their religious capacity to refuse to perform a marriage.
What the Prince William Pastor’s Lawsuit Challenges
Ben Purves, a pastor at Occoquan Bible Church in Woodbridge, sued last month in Prince William County Circuit Court to void the amendment if it passed, Gayety reported. Question 2 “would strike out the biblical definition of marriage from the Virginia state constitution,” Purves said, according to FOX 5 DC.
His lawyers at the Founding Freedoms Law Center say the House clerk never sent the text out for posting at local courthouses before the 2025 House election. The case “is about the rule of law,” Josh Hetzler, the center’s executive director, said in its announcement.
The suit asks a judge to declare the amendment “invalid and of no effect,” Gayety reported. The Family Foundation, which Cobb also leads, described it in a Nov. 2 blog post as a challenge to an amendment “that seeks to redefine marriage and insert gender ideology language.” A Campbell County judge tossed a similar courthouse-posting challenge to another amendment in July, finding the rule “directory” rather than “mandatory,” Gayety reported.
The marriage case wasn’t going to reach a judge before Election Day, FOX 5 DC reported, and the foundation’s Nov. 2 update gave no hearing date for it.
