The Virginia House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a resolution that seeks to repeal a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

The resolution that state Del. Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County) introduced by a 58-35 vote margin. State Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) has proposed an identical measure in the Virginia Senate.

Ebbin and Sickles are both gay.

Voters approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment in 2006.

Same-sex couples have been able to legally marry in Virginia since 2014. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin last year signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.

The General Assembly in 2021 approved a resolution that seeks to repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment. It must pass in two successive legislatures before it can go to the ballot.

The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee on Tuesday advanced Ebbin’s resolution by a 10-4 vote margin. The House on Tuesday also approved resolutions that would enshrine reproductive rights and restore formerly incarcerated people’s right to vote in the state constitution.

The Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County, which prosecutes crimes, confirmed last week that charges were dropped against two U.S. Army soldiers arrested in February 2024 for allegedly stealing Pride flags from the home of a lesbian couple on five separate days between September 2023 and January 2024.

According to Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghni-Tafti, the charges against the two men — Specialist Matthew Henshaw, 21, and Private First Class Joseph DiGregorio, 23, — were dismissed after they successfully completed a recently initiated program called the Heart of Safety Restorative Justice Conferencing Program.

Under the program, the two men attended counseling sessions with facilitators associated with the program over a period of six months before meeting with the two women whose Pride flags they allegedly stole — Michelle Logan and Jenna Burnett.

In statements released to the news media, Logan and Burnett said the two soldiers appeared to have expressed remorse for their actions of repeatedly pulling down and stealing the couple’s Pride flags. Following their face-to-face conversations with Henshaw and Gregorio, the two women said the men also appear to have gained an understanding of the issues and concerns of the LGBTQ community and the need for ending anti-LGBTQ bias and discrimination.

“We believed they could potentially be amenable to change and also felt that simply putting charges on their records didn’t necessarily feel like enough,” Logan told the online news publication ARL Now. “We wanted them to try to educate themselves and understand why stealing a Pride flag isn’t just a felony but a hate crime against two people who had to live through it,” she told ARL Now.

At the time of their arrest, Henshaw and Digregorio were members of the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Regiment, also known as the Old Guard, an elite ceremonial unit that participates in burials at Arlington National Cemetery.

Dehghni-Tafti told media outlets, including the Washington Blade, that the objective of the restorative justice conferencing program is to provide an alternative to incarceration for people charged with a crime if they voluntarily participate in the program and if the victim of the crime also agrees to participate in the program.

“It really requires people to think about what they did to the victim and explain to the victim, face to face often, why they did it and make a promise to the victim that they are going to be different and not do it again,” Dehghni-Tafti told the Blade.

According to Dehghni-Tafti, admission into the program also requires a person charged with a crime to admit to having committed the crime.

She said the program has a preference, but not a requirement, that people charged with a crime who are accepted into the program are between the age of 16 and 26. She said people charged with certain violent crimes, such as intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and murder are not eligible for admission to the program.

Also, at the time of their arrest, Arlington police said the two soldiers were stationed at the Army’s Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington. One of the base’s entrances is located about two blocks from the 200 block of South Courthouse Road, where police said the two women’s house is located and where their Pride flags had been displayed.

According to court records, Henshaw, who was 20 at the time of his arrest, was charged with three counts of Unlawful Entry — Bias Motivated — and three counts of Petit Larceny for the flag thefts that police said occurred Sept. 16, Sept. 30, and Jan. 27. The records show that DiGregorio was charged with one count of Petit Larceny for the flag theft that occurred Jan. 21.

Police have said a view of the perpetrator of the flag theft on Sept. 16 was captured on a doorbell camera on the women’s house. The couple also went public with their plight on social media, which raised public awareness of the flag thefts and generated tips that helped police identify the two soldieries, who were arrested on Feb. 2.

The records show the single charge against DiGregorio was dropped on Sept. 9 and each of the charges against Henshaw were dismissed on Dec. 23.

In a show of support and solidarity for Logan and Burnett, who are out as a lesbian couple, at least a half dozen or more residents of nearby houses displayed Pride flags on their homes after learning that the couple’s flags had been repeatedly stolen.  

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares on Monday announced he will run for reelection.

Miyares, a Republican who was in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2016-2022, in 2021 defeated then-Attorney General Mark Herring.

Miyares in a 2023 letter to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said school districts must adhere to the state’s new guidelines for transgender and nonbinary students that activists say could potentially out them. Miyares also joined other state attorneys general who challenged the Biden-Harris administration’s Title IX rules that specifically protect LGBTQ students from discrimination based on their gender identity and sexual orientation.

Youngkin under the state constitution cannot run for a second consecutive term as governor.

Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who also opposes LGBTQ rights, in September announced she is running to succeed Youngkin in 2025. Earle-Sears will likely face outgoing Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger in next year’s general election.