The most anti-gay state in the union, if you analyze its legislative history, is now beginning to see gay flight. May they take their disposable income, their skills, their jobs, their companies and their self-respect with them. This is the state that has enacted the full Christianist agenda on gay couples: denying them not just marriage and civil unions, but even legally binding private contracts to help them support their relationships. The situation is particularly rough for gay couples with children:
In 2002, for example, an Alexandria family court ruled that a father would lose custody of his son unless the father's male partner, who had lived with them for five years, moved out. In 2004, a Winchester judge ruled that the female partner of a woman who had borne a child in 2004, whom the child had called "mama," had no legal custody rights and that the woman who gave birth was the "sole parent."
If majorities want to persecute minorities, and the courts won't stop them, people have few options but to leave. That's what many African Americans did when their interracial marriages and families were ruled null and void — in the same state only forty years ago. It's sad to see this pattern repeated. But if Virginians want their state to be Homorein, there's no reason gays should stay.