Some of the opposition to Virginia’s proposed same-sex marriage constitutional amendment comes down to one word: gender. If successful, Ballot Question 2 would define marriage in the commonwealth as between two adults regardless of race, sex or gender.
Federal law, US Supreme Court rulings and Virginia law all currently recognize same-sex and gender-diverse marriages. But proponents of Virginia’s marriage equality amendment say the state needs to double down on those protections in case that were to change.
Social conservatives are uneasy about the proposal, particularly because it distinguishes gender from sex. It’s also likely the first time gender would be mentioned in the Virginia Constitution.
Opponents, like former Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, question why the amendment’s authors did that.
“Why include gender? Because the dictionary says that gender is whatever it is, whatever society says it is today, what it changes tomorrow, it changes the next day. Everything is in flux,” she said.
Earle-Sears and other opponents worry that adding gender to the constitution would extend legal protections to transgender people more broadly — especially in the areas of sports and access to restrooms.
Since the mid-20th century, psychologists and medical researchers have used the term sex to broadly describe a biological state dealing with genes and anatomy, whereas gender is a sociological behavior or role.
Distinguishing between sex and gender in the law is a relatively new practice, said Elana Redfield. She’s the federal policy director at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which focuses on LGBTQ policy.
“There’s been a line of thinking for decades that the term sex is kind of an umbrella term, and that gender is a component of that umbrella term,” she said.
In a 2020 case about employment discrimination, the US Supreme Court found that the word “sex” in the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 also refers to sexual orientation and gender identity.
But the court has since changed course in several cases. For example, in 2025, in United States v. Skrmetti, the court upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors. (Cisgender minors can still access the same hormone treatments for disorders like precocious puberty.)
“The Skrmetti decision that was in 2025 is where we see the court saying, ‘Well, when it comes to transgender people, there’s a little nuance here, and gender should be separated from sex,’” Redfield said.
Redfield is skeptical that adding gender to the marriage amendment would apply beyond the narrow context of marriage. Other states have created broad protections for gender identity and expression, and Vermonters are voting on a measure this fall to apply state constitutional protections to gender identity.
Redfield said Virginia must explicitly include sex and gender in the constitutional amendment if lawmakers and voters want transgender, nonbinary and intersex people to enjoy the amendment’s protections.
“Because of the emergence of this discourse that would completely discount transgender people’s lived experience, it becomes more important to very specifically articulate that trans experiences will be understood and protected,” she said.
Virginia Republicans have repeatedly rallied social conservatives around restricting the rights of transgender and nonbinary people, especially in the areas of youth sports and medical care. That has not stopped the Movement Advancement Project, a progressive research organization, from rating Virginia as having made the most progress on LGBTQ Issues of any state between 2020 and 2026.
Gender played a central role during Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s tenure. His administration rewrote Virginia’s model policies for transgender students in 2022. And it was a centerpiece of Earle-Sears’ campaign as the Republican nominee in 2025.
Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation, said maintaining traditional gender roles is important for raising children.
“Talk to the young girl, the 12-year-old about to approach womanhood, who doesn’t have a mom to walk them through that process. Talk to the young man that is trying to figure out what manhood is and doesn’t have a dad,” Cobb told VPM News as part of the series Amending Virginia.
“We know there are single moms, single dads doing heroic jobs, but to intentionally create homes where someone grows up without a mom and her dad is putting them at a disadvantage,” she said.
That’s just not what the data shows, according to at least one significant study: the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Families Study, which started in 1986 and followed the same children for decades.
“We didn’t find any significant differences between the children in the same-sex parent families in comparison to this national data in the U.S,” said Henny Bos, a full professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands who focuses on families with same-sex parents. “When we are looking at the well-being of children,one of the most important predictors for healthy growing up for children is the parent-child relationship.”
But fundamentally, this amendment is about the right for two adults to marry.
And advocates say that right has existed in the United States now for over a decade — so it’s now the norm.