We oppose Virginia’s marriage amendment because marriage is not a political invention waiting for government to redefine it. Marriage begins with a truth older than Virginia, older than the United States, and older than every court: God created humanity male and female and established marriage as the covenant union of one man and one woman.
That conviction is not rooted in hostility toward anyone. Every person bears the image of God and deserves dignity, honesty, and equal protection under law. But dignity does not require us to deny the nature of marriage. Love is a moral duty toward every neighbor. Marriage is a specific institution with a specific design and purpose.
Scripture presents marriage from Genesis forward as the joining of man and woman into one flesh. Jesus reaffirmed that created order when He spoke of male and female and declared that the two become one. Marriage reflects bodily complementarity, lifelong fidelity, the creation and nurture of children, and the union of the two halves of humanity. Government did not create those realities. Government merely recognized them because stable marriages serve families and the common good.
The proposed amendment would do more than remove language made unenforceable by federal court decisions. It would place new language in Virginia’s Constitution recognizing marriage between two adult persons regardless of sex, gender, or race. Race has never been relevant to the biological or Biblical definition of marriage. Sex is central to it. Combining those categories makes disagreement with same-sex marriage sound morally equivalent to racial discrimination, even though the two questions rest on entirely different principles.
A constitution is not a place for fashionable slogans or temporary judicial settlements. It is the highest law of the Commonwealth. Once broad language is placed there, future legislatures cannot easily correct it, and courts will determine how far its meaning reaches. Words such as “sex” and “gender” are already the center of major disputes involving religious liberty, parental authority, education, employment, and institutional conscience. Virginians should not pretend those disputes disappear when the language enters the Constitution.
We must also reject the claim that civil recognition requires moral surrender. We can treat every person lawfully and respectfully without declaring that every relationship is the same. Equality before the law does not mean every human distinction must be erased. A church is not a business, a mother is not a father, and a union of two men or two women is not the same human reality as the union of husband and wife.
The deepest concern is not what government permits. It is what government teaches. Law shapes culture. Constitutional law teaches with special authority. When the state declares that sex is irrelevant to marriage, it teaches that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that the male-female foundation of family life has no public meaning.
We cannot preserve marriage by anger, cruelty, or panic. We preserve it by speaking clearly, living faithfully, strengthening our own homes, honoring husbands and wives, supporting mothers and fathers, and refusing to abandon truth when truth becomes unpopular.
Marriage is not ours to redesign. It is ours to receive, protect, and pass forward. Virginia should not constitutionalize a definition that separates marriage from the created order that gives it meaning. We should vote no and defend marriage with conviction, compassion, and courage. Our children deserve nothing less from this generation of Virginians.
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