Augusta Free Press
February 17, 2005
By Chris Graham
“It’s interesting to see that in a state with the transportation-infrastructure problems that we have,” said Joshua Israel, the president of the Virginia Partisans Gay and Lesbian Democratic Club, “and people all over who don’t have access to adequate health care, and where the public schools are in need of our serious attention, there’s nothing better for our elected leaders to do but pass another bill to ban gay marriage in Virginia, just in case the first two bills that they passed to achieve the same end didn’t do the job well enough already.”
Gay and lesbian rights activists in Virginia are definitely feeling the pinch from the Virginia General Assembly – which has busied itself in recent weeks with deliberations over proposals to amend the Virginia Constitution to amend gay marriage, update the state code to get Gay-Straight Alliance chapters off public-school campuses and to permit license plates to spread the anti-gay agenda on the state’s roadways.