HAMPTON ROADS, Va. -- The U.S. Senate has passed landmark bipartisan legislation to protect same-sex marriages. Some said it’s an extraordinary sign of shifting national politics on the issue and that it’s a relief for hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide.
The bill approved Tuesday would ensure that same-sex and interracial marriages are enshrined in federal law. Senate Democrats are moving quickly to send the bill to the House and President Joe Biden’s desk.
In Virginia, Republican State Delegate Tim Anderson is moving forward with a resolution to repeal the same-sex marriage constitutional prohibition in Virginia. It would be discussed in the upcoming General Assembly session which begins in January.
“Fundamentally, it does not change anything about Virginia law, because the U.S. Supreme Court has already declared this provision of our constitution -unconstitutional,” Anderson said. “So, nothing is going to fundamentally change in Virginia, it’s just mostly about removing dead language in our Constitution.”
Anderson voted against a proposal in the past, saying he didn’t agree with the language.
“I didn’t agree with how the Democrats were trying to replace it with language that I thought would have overly broadened the state’s interest in marriage," Anderson said. "I think it’s the right approach. It’s the right thing to do."
If removed, it would need to be approved two years in a row by lawmakers before it would go to voters. The earliest that would happen is in Nov. 2024.
“I think you’ll see most of the people that think like me in the General Assembly, the conservatives, that had a concern with the Democrat language last year, are going to support this clean version of just a straight repeal,” Anderson told News 3.
Delegate Anderson wrote seven reasons why he’s sponsoring the change. In the final one, he said the principle of “removing the government from telling people who they can love and commit their lives to” is conservative. He added, “We should never, as government, tell people who they can love, who they can hold themselves out in public as loving and treat them differently than how we treat those in a traditional heterosexual marriage.”
