Mark Sickles
In response, Sickles drafted legislation prohibiting anyone from operating a motorized partition when students are in a room at school unless the wall has a safety sensor installed with it.1 of the House Privileges and Elections Committee, Mark Sickles and Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-) supported the effort make Virginia the 38th state to ratify the ERA.[8] In an op-ed for The Washington Post, which noted the striking-down in the Eastern Virginia U.S. District Court of the constitutionality of the state's ban on same-sex marriage, Sickles publicly came out as gay.This made him the second openly LGBT member of the Virginia General Assembly, alongside Sen. Adam Ebbin, who was out before his election to the House in 2003.[9] In 2001, Sickles ran for the House and lost by 313 votes[10] to freshman Republican Tom Bolvin, who had defeated 11-term Democrat Gladys Keating two years earlier.