More than 150 Virginia pastors are urging voters to reject ballot amendments on abortion and same-sex marriage, calling them contrary to the Word of God and human flourishing.
Breitbart News reported that a coalition of pastors released an open letter pressing Virginians to vote no on Question 1 and Question 2, the proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot during the September 18 to November 3 voting window.
The letter frames both measures as threats to the common good. It tells voters the amendments “are opposed to human flourishing and contrary to the Word of God,” and it calls rejection a moral duty for citizens of the Commonwealth.
Question 1 would write expansive abortion protections into the Virginia Constitution. Question 2 would erase the state’s 2006 definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and replace it with language allowing any two adults to marry. Pastors say neither change belongs in the state’s foundational law.
The open letter, posted through Virginia pastors’ coalition site, does not treat the amendments as narrow policy tweaks. It treats them as constitutional statements about human life, marriage, and sex that the signers say contradict Scripture and basic reality.
On abortion, the pastors write that all human life is sacred and created in God’s image, citing Genesis 1:27. They state that life has “inestimable worth” from conception through natural death, including pre-born babies, the aged, and the physically or mentally challenged.
They reject the claim that abortion is healthcare or a fundamental right. In their words:
“Abortion is the killing of a pre-born child in the womb. It is moral distortion to present this violation of the sixth commandment as a moral good or as a fundamental right, and it is deceptive framing to present abortion’s destruction of life as healthcare.”
The letter continues that mothers should not destroy the life in their wombs and that medical professionals should care for every human life, especially the most vulnerable. Unborn babies, it says, have a “fundamental right...to be born, to live, and to breathe.”
Their conclusion on Question 1 is direct:
“There is never a parental right to take the life of a child. No society should deny this fundamental right to its most vulnerable members. We must not dehumanize an entire class of the most vulnerable persons and enshrine a ‘right’ to destroy innocent life in the Virginia Constitution. It is essential that we vote no and reject Amendment 1.”
State election materials describe Question 1 as letting people “make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management, and fertility care,” protecting doctors, nurses, and patients from punishment for those decisions, and allowing third-trimester limits only when the patient’s health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive. Breitbart’s account notes abortion is already legal in Virginia up to 26 weeks and six days. The pastors warn the amendment would still bring “more destruction of human life in the womb” by locking a broad right into the constitution.
On Question 2, the letter defines marriage as “the uniting of one man and one woman into a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture.” God created the institution in Eden, the pastors write, and marriage points to Christ and the church.
They quote Jesus in Matthew 19:6, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate”, and add that what God has defined, man should not redefine. Official ballot language, as described in the reporting, would remove the ban on same-sex marriage, affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race, and require equal legal treatment of valid marriages. That would strike the 2006 constitutional definition of marriage as one man and one woman.
The pastors call marriage part of the “bedrock of human civilization” and say it is “presumptuous to imagine it can be redefined” and “modern arrogance to believe this generation knows better than all past generations.”
They pair that claim with a statement on sex and gender: every human is “immutably male or female,” a truth “embedded in our DNA.” Denying that reality, they write, brings “a ripple effect of harm to society that is acutely felt by individuals, families, schools, and sports teams.” Ontology, they argue, is not rooted in the self but in objective reality created by God. It is “self-deceptive,” the letter says, to imagine people can redefine marriage or remake themselves regarding gender.
Their call on the second measure is as plain as the first: “Let us not discard these fundamental truths of creation. Instead, we urge all Virginia voters to vote no and reject Amendment 2.”
The pastors’ letter lands on top of earlier Catholic opposition. Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington has run a high-profile Catholics Vote No effort. Priests in 70 Northern Virginia parishes read a letter at Mass opposing the amendments. Burbidge and Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout also issued a joint statement in August against the measures.
One coordinating pastor told the Daily Signal the open letter represents at least 90 churches and reaches more than 50,000 parishioners across the state. The signers present the campaign as civic duty, not partisan theater.
They write:
“As citizens of Virginia, we are under moral obligation to vote for the good of our Commonwealth. Truly, this is what commonwealth means, for we are bound together here for one another’s common good.”
And again: “Let us seek one another’s true good and not mark our identity with the deprivations that these amendments would bring to the Constitution of Virginia.”
The letter insists the truth about life in the womb and about marriage and gender “does not originate within us, but it comes to us from God.” Love, it says, communicates truth and speaks for others’ good; love without truth is not love at all.
The pastors state they do not condone “hateful or harassing behavior” toward people who disagree. They write the letter “for your good and with love for the Commonwealth of Virginia,” add that none of them is truly good apart from grace, and invite readers to seek Christ, read the Gospel of John, and visit one of the listed churches.
Their closing line on the ballot is simple: “Let us pray for and seek the good of Virginia together, and let us vote no on Amendments 1 and 2. May God give grace to the Commonwealth.”
Virginia already allows abortion deep into the second trimester. Its constitution still carries a 2006 marriage definition rooted in one man and one woman. The amendments would constitutionalize a much broader abortion right and strip that marriage language in favor of any two adults. More than 150 pastors, joined by leading Catholic bishops and tens of thousands of parishioners in their orbit, are telling voters the price of that rewrite is too high.
When elites try to etch contested moral revolutions into a state constitution, ordered liberty still depends on citizens who will say no, and mean it.
