Virginia woke up again this morning two days after. On Tuesday, voters passed Virginia Amendment 2 (Question 2 on the ballot), striking the words “one man and one woman” from our state’s Bill of Rights. Yesterday, in The Morning After, Part 1, I wrote about Amendment 1 and the right to life. Today we turn to marriage.
The Associated Press called it on election night, and it was not close. The results remain unofficial until the State Board of Elections certifies them, scheduled for December 7.
If I have a fact wrong, or you disagree, tell me in the comments below. I read them.
Dear Christian, hear me as a watchman: the Commonwealth has changed its definition of marriage. The Lord has not changed His.
What Virginia Amendment 2 Actually Says
Words matter, so begin with the text. The amendment (HJ3) rewrites Article I, Section 15-A. The 2006 language said: “That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.” Voters have now struck that sentence.
In its place, the new section declares that “marriage is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.” Those words come almost straight from Loving v. Virginia (1967).
The state may not deny a marriage license to “two adult persons seeking a lawful marriage on the basis of the sex, gender, or race of such persons.” And it must “recognize any lawful marriage between two adult persons and treat such marriages equally under the law.”
What Changes, and What Does Not
I want to be careful here. In practice, very little changes in Virginia marriage law. The 2006 provision had been unenforceable since Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and a 2024 Virginia law already barred denying a license on the basis of sex, gender, or race.
What the amendment adds is constitutional protection, beyond an ordinary statute. The Department of Elections’ own explanation says the old ban “would be enforceable again” if the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell. Voters have now moved to close that door in Virginia’s highest law.
Notice, too, what the text does not say. It binds “this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.” It names no church and no pastor.
Those are the texts. Here is my conviction: Virginia has written into its Bill of Rights a definition of marriage that God never gave.
Who Defined Marriage First?
Long before Richmond or any constitution, God defined marriage in a garden. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
When the Pharisees tested Jesus, He went back to the beginning: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female … So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4–6).
Jesus treated Genesis as the definition. No ballot can amend it. Marriage is not a policy the state invented and may revise. It is part of God’s created order, written into the first man and the first woman before there was a law to write it anywhere else.
Jesus said “male and female.” The new text lists “sex, gender” side by side. I believe that pairing writes the confusion of our age into our founding law.
To be fair, many yes voters wanted to protect married neighbors, and some were thinking of Mildred and Richard Loving. On race, Christians should stand with them gladly. God “made from one man every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:26). Virginia’s old ban on interracial marriage was wrong.
But race and sex are not the same kind of thing. Skin color has nothing to do with marriage. Male and female is what marriage is.
What You Can Do About Virginia Amendment 2 Today
The church’s witness on marriage never depended on a constitution. The early church kept Jesus’ definition in a Roman world that did not share it. Our witness rests where it always has: in our homes.
Paul calls marriage a living picture: “the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31–32). Every faithful marriage preaches that sermon, with or without the state’s agreement.
Here is your one step this week. Sit down with your spouse, read Matthew 19:4–6 aloud together, and pray by name for one couple in your church.
The First Word Was Not Richmond’s
Pastors, as I pleaded in A Warning to the Watchmen, this is no time for a quiet pulpit. Preach Genesis 2 and Matthew 19 plainly, and preach them with tears, not contempt.
The same Lord who defines marriage holds out mercy to all who have bent it, from the husband who broke his vows to neighbors in same-sex relationships. That mercy is for every Virginian, however he voted, who will turn from sin and trust the crucified and risen Christ. Psalm 11 asks, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The next verse answers: “The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD’s throne is in heaven” (Psalm 11:3–4).
No argument of mine can open a heart to God’s design. Only the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead can do that. But the God who joined the first man and woman in Eden can still draw a wandering Commonwealth back to Himself, one home and one marriage at a time.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
