The Supreme Court has redefined “marriage” beyond recognition, and even the large numbers who were not pleased by this latest usurpation of our supposed republic’s supposed right of self-government seem unable to conceive what it would mean to disagree, much less to resist. The moral authority that the Supreme Court gained a half century ago through its role in advancing racial justice seems to have given it carte blanche to dictate “progress” in whatever way “progressives” decide to define the right side of history.

I noticed a “debate”…on the supposedly conservative or at least “balanced” Fox News. The question concerned whether “gender identity” can trump actual sexual difference, and Bill O’Reilly ended the debate before it began by saying: the Supreme Court will decide that anyway. Our robed sovereigns decide the basic stuff, and we may choose to divert ourselves by arguing about just how the dust of electoral politics will settle.

Conservatives are used to losing on the fundamental issues to five justices abetted by a bewildered and dispirited former citizenry. But we thought we could keep meaningful hope alive by being a power to reckon with within the Republican Party. This hope has for now been ended by the hostile takeover of this party by a mighty surge of populism or Caesarism, a mute and formless “anti-establishment” mood that is as much beyond reasoned debate as the new rights handed down from our judicial Mount Sinai.

Optimistic conservatives may find a promising kernel of justice in this populist reaction, which delights in the leader’s disrespect for lame liberal pieties and asserts a people’s right to put themselves first. But realistic conservatives have to notice that the leader’s disrespect for pieties is promiscuous and that his people are defined by nothing but his whims.

Prudent religious leaders have taken stock of the new situation. Not long ago we were exhorted from the pulpit to enter bravely into the public square in order to defend the goods of family on the basis of natural truths reinforced by revelation. Now we are counseled, in effect, to make a virtue of necessity: citizenship is to be defined more by civility than by courage, and a respect for “pluralism” is the order of the day.

The prudence of such counsel is as incontestable as the Christian duty of gentleness and kindness. It was always unbecoming of Christians to be bombastic and domineering, and now it’s also ridiculous. If those who believe in the intrinsic goodness and the benefits to society of the natural family are doomed to be a despised minority, let us be despised as little as possible by agreeing to the terms of a “pluralistic” society. Since we’ve lost the culture wars, let’s declare them over before we lose any more.

There may be no better play for religious and moral conservatives in the foreseeable future than this retreat to the rhetoric of “civility” and “pluralism.” But it’s hard not to hear some whistling past the graveyard. The progress of extreme individualism or moral relativism as public policy will not stop because conservative Christians stop fighting it. The prospect of retiring, if not to some desert monastery, then at least to the quiet service of our families and congregations (the “Benedict Option”) has its undeniable attractions but, under the modern state, even the deserts must be colonized by the endless expansion and establishment of lifestyle rights.

From the Deseret News article “After the Culture Wars“