COMMENTARY

Races that could determine the fate of same-sex Virginia marriages are on this year’s ballot

The House of Delegates elections, where all 100 seats are on the ballot, could portend heartbreaking consequences, including the potential forced dissolution of many thousands of same-sex marriages, writes columnist Bob Lewis.

BOB LEWIS
AUGUST 26, 2025
5:15 AM

Virginia is about to enter the unofficial final lap of its long race to determine the next tenant of its Executive Mansion. The escalating television ads, the direct mail, the social media bombardments are just starting. Campaign signs sprout on lawns like toadstools.

But it’s the races at the bottom of November’s ballot — for all 100 seats in the House of Delegates — that could portend heartbreaking consequences: potentially the forced dissolution of many thousands of same-sex marriages and the families built on them across the commonwealth. ... How, you ask? The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages 10 years ago in Obergefell v. Hodges. It’s settled law.

Roe v. Wade stood for 49 years, guaranteeing a federal legal right to abortions, until a conservative court supermajority, cemented during President Donald Trump’s first term, overturned it in 2022 and made reproductive rights a state-by-state determination.

Now, the justices are considering a request to reconsider and reverse Obergefell from a former Kentucky court clerk once jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The court’s most fringe-right justice, Clarence Thomas, is blunt about his dream of reversing rulings that legalized not only gay marriage but also contraception and even sexual intimacy between consenting adults of the same gender. ... Should the court hear the case and, sometime next year, grant Thomas’s sadistic fantasy, the legality of identical-gender marriages would likely devolve to the state legislatures, just as it did with abortion.

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Bob Lewis covered Virginia government and politics for 20 years for The Associated Press. Now retired from a public relations career at McGuireWoods, he is a columnist for the Virginia Mercury. He can be reached at blewis@virginiamercury.com.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.