One of the issues that I didn’t get around to in the last two weeks, while writing way too many words on the question of whether economics or culture explains the decline of marriage and the two-parent family in America, is the question of what, if anything, conservatives actually think we should do about the problem if it is primarily a cultural one. This is the question raised, for instance, by this Damon Linker column, which argues that “scolds” of the right don’t have a plan, beyond pointless hectoring, to build the kind of familial-communal order we’d prefer.
Linker’s question deserves a long and detailed response. (This piece from my friend Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry is a beginning, but it doesn’t have the insane prolix detail that I’d like to eventually bring to bear). But since this week we’re all debating — well, or “debating,” in many cases — religious liberty in an age of same-sex marriage, I’d just make a modest point that’s specific to the current controversy. Whatever else cultural conservatives would have us do to mend the country’s social fabric, they wouldn’t have us take the path that’s opened up during various Obama-era debates, in which traditional forms of religion (my own included) are increasingly treated, in law and culture, as an dangerous obstacle to policy objectives and a major social problem to be solved.
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