In 2006, Virginians were asked whether they wanted the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. By a landslide margin, they said they did — 57.1% voted in favor of an amendment that declared the commonwealth would only recognize “a union between one man and one woman” as a marriage.
Eight years later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a case that legalized same-sex marriage. On Oct. 6, 2014, the first same-sex weddings were officiated in Virginia.
The next summer — June 26, 2015 — the U.S. Supreme Court struck down remaining bans on same-sex marriages across the country.
A decade later, though, Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage remains written into the fundamental law of the commonwealth — moot for now, but language that would come back into force if a future U.S. Supreme Court ever changed its mind, as it sometimes does. That’s what drove a wedding officiant in Henry County to offer free services to any same-sex couples who wished to get married before Donald Trump takes office and potentially has a chance to appoint more Supreme Court justices; see the story by Cardinal’s Dean-Paul Stephens.
Virginia Democrats (joined by some Republicans) would like to eliminate the possibility of such unions ever getting declared null and void — or, at least, getting banned again. They’re pushing a proposed constitutional amendment to strike that 2006 language from the state constitution. The House of Delegates passed the amendment 58-35 on Tuesday, with seven Republicans joining the Democrats, five abstaining and two not voting. The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee also passed the amendment; it’s expected to pass the full Senate, as well. (See the votes here.) It’s also notable that some of the Republicans who joined Democrats in voting for the amendment on Tuesday were from deeply conservative areas — most notably, Del. Tom Garrett of Louisa County, a county that voted 60% in favor of the ban on same-sex marriage in 2006. Garrett, though, takes the libertarian point of view that maybe government shouldn’t be involved in the marriage business.
Under Virginia’s rules, such an amendment would have to pass the General Assembly twice, with an election in between, before it could go to a referendum. With Democrats holding majorities, albeit narrow ones, in both chambers, there seems little doubt that the amendment will pass this year. As for next year, that will likely depend on the outcome of this fall’s House of Delegates races, which means a future vote on the amendment might be an issue in many legislative contests this fall.
The year 2006 doesn’t seem that long ago to some of us — although anyone born that year is now eligible to vote — but in looking back at the election results that year, you can see just how much Virginia politics has changed.
In the fall of 2006, Virginia still had two Republican U.S. senators. It also hadn’t voted Democratic in a presidential election since the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater. That was the only break in a string of Republican presidential victories in Virginia going back to 1952.
Virginia started to change that fall: Democrat Jim Webb unexpectedly won the U.S. Senate race. Two years later, Barack Obama carried the state, setting in motion what is now five straight Democratic presidential victories. However, on the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, lots of Democratic localities voted for the ban.
This map shows how few localities voted on the same-sex marriage side. Technically, they were voting no, against the ban, not yes, in favor of same-sex marriage, but effectively it was the same thing — and the mind has a hard time grasping negatives, so for our purposes today I’ve gone with the shorthand to make things easier to understand:
This map shows which localities voted Democratic in November’s presidential election:
Now this map combines those two — to highlight the localities that voted on the liberal side in both elections, and those that only did so in November.
There are lots of places to start — Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, the suburbs of Richmond, pretty much all of Hampton Roads — but let’s start instead in Roanoke.
In Roanoke, 54.4% of the voters that fall cast ballots in favor of banning same-sex marriage at the same time that 57.2% of them were voting for the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
A dozen years later, Roanoke elected its first openly gay member of city council — and Joe Cobb led the balloting. In November, Cobb was elected the city’s mayor. In between, there was a time when Roanoke had three gay members on its seven-member council. It seems inconceivable that the Roanoke of today would vote the same way that Roanoke did in 2006.
Back then, not all Democratic voters supported same-sex marriage. If the proposed amendment to repeal the constitutional ban makes it to the ballot, I’d expect it to pass in Roanoke by a wide margin — generally speaking, all Democrats would support it, as would some Republicans.
The public’s view toward same-sex marriage has changed in a remarkably short period of time as far as social changes go. The 2006 referendum gives us a baseline for how Virginians felt — 57.1% were against allowing same-same marriage, 42.9% were in favor.
By 2014, the year that same-sex marriage was legalized in Virginia, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 50% of Virginians supported such unions while 42% opposed. By 2016, a year after the Supreme Court ruling, a Public Religion Research Institute poll found that 57% in Virginia supported same-sex marriage. That figure has consistently grown in almost every poll since, with the most recent one, in 2023, showing support in Virginia at 71%. Based on that, I’d expect an amendment to repeal the ban to pass with about that same share of the vote.
Three states that had similar bans in their state constitutions held referendums in 2024 on whether to repeal them. All voted to do so — California, Colorado and Hawaii. Colorado’s vote might be the most instructive for Virginia, if for no other reason than Virginia’s not much like California or Hawaii. Colorado, however, is much like Virginia in that it’s a former Republican state that has now realigned into the Democratic column. Colorado voted 54.1% for Kamala Harris for president, but 64.3% voted to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage. Virginia voted 51.8% for Harris. If Virginia is really like Colorado, then tack on another 10 percentage points and the vote to repeal would be close to 62% — less than the 71% figure above but still not close. For those who support keeping the current ban in the constitution, just in case the U.S. Supreme Court someday reverses the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, that’s why it’s essential to stop the repeal amendment in the General Assembly because if it ever gets put on a ballot, it would surely pass.
Now, all that is speculation — speculation informed by facts but speculation nonetheless. Here are other facts: The Census Bureau reported in 2023 that Virginia has same-sex married couples in every city and county but one — tiny Highland County, where the population is less than 2,300.
On a percentage basis, the census found the highest concentrations of same-sex couples in Alexandria and Norfolk, with Roanoke third. The same Roanoke that less than a generation ago voted to ban such marriages.
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