RICHMOND (LifeSiteNews) — A Democrat effort to repeal the Virginia Constitution’s unenforced prohibition on same-sex “marriage” has failed to receive the necessary votes to advance beyond a subcommittee in the state House of Delegates.
Since 2006, the state constitution has stated that “only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth,” though the language has been unenforceable since 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court forced all 50 states to recognize same-sex “marriages” in Obergefell v. Hodges.
The Center Square reports that Democrat state Sen. Adam Ebbin, one of the first openly homosexual members of the state legislature proposed a constitutional amendment to submit to voters that would repeal this language.
But the subcommittee considering the House version of the bill, consisting of four Republicans and just one Democrat, voted to reject it, killing the amendment’s prospects for the time being.
None of the GOP lawmakers to oppose the measure elaborated on their reasoning, but a lobbyist with the Virginia Family Foundation, Todd Gathje, argued that “[w]ith the court’s precedence in Dobbs [which overturned Roe v. Wade last summer], the court is clearly in a position to reverse its erroneous 2015 decision. If and when it does, Virginia’s Constitution should continue to reflect the truth about marriage.”
The radical LGBT agenda infiltrating the Catholic Church is persecuting another brave priest, who now desperately needs your help to speak on his behalf.
Fr. Joachim Wernersbach has been SUSPENDED by his abbot of the Benedictine Tholey Abbey for preaching against gender ideology and the heterodox Synodal Way — pushed by Pope Francis and the German Synod of Bishops.
Fr. Wernersbach is also suspended from performing pastoral activists in the surrounding parish, and is being subject to “an ecclesiastical investigation.”
We need everyone to speak up for suspended priest Fr. Wernersbach — the LGBT agenda cannot claim another brave and devout priest.
SIGN and SHARE now.
Pro-life and pro-family priests around the world are being silenced and cancelled, while pro-LGBT activists get hand-written letters from the Pope, like Fr. James Martin.
Fr. Wernersbach simply reiterated Catholic teaching in his Christmas homily: "You hear about gender and transgender, transhumanism and reproductive health, wokeness and LGBTQ, diversity and identity. Of multiple genders and gender reassignment, plus this devastating new understanding of revelation from the Synodal Way," he said.
"My dear friends, even the terms are absolutely disturbing. They all have one thing in common: they lack beauty, they lack coherence, and they lack naturalness. They are not aligned, not in harmony with the inconceivably beautiful Divine Order."
For this denunciation of anti-Catholic trends, Fr. Wernersbach has been suspended by his own abbot. The entire homily has also been removed from YouTube.
The systematic persecution of pro-life and pro-family priests must end now.
Demand that Fr. Wernersbach be restored to full priestly ministry and demand that his superiors STOP shilling for the LGBT agenda!
Good and faithful priests are being systematically cancelled — but you can raise your voice to stop the attacks.
SIGN NOW before it’s too late.
Fr. Wernersbach needs your voice!
MORE INFORMATION:
German priest punished by superiors for preaching against gender ideology, Synodal Way
“Today’s vote proves that Virginia’s Republican Party believes that the far-right Supreme Court will act to overturn the precedent set in the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, and it’s clear they want to be ready to ban current, lawful LGBTQ marriages if they do,” complained Liam Watson, press secretary for the Democratic Party of Virginia.
While many social conservatives and judicial originalists would like to see Obergefell overturned, and conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has written that the 2015 ruling should be revisited, there is no indication that a majority of the current justices would vote to do so; Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was one of the five votes to overturn Roe, wrote that Dobbs “does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.” Nor is there any indication that a case to raise the issue is anywhere close to reaching the nation’s highest court, or that the Republican Party currently has any appetite for such a battle.
As a practical matter, neither current law nor the Ebbin amendment would have affected the status quo in Virginia; on top of reigning judicial precedent, the federal Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law last December by President Joe Biden, legislatively codifies Obergefell’s denial of states’ ability to recognize only male-female unions as marriage.