the fort is betrayed, even by those who should have defended it

In the last few days I've noticed a number of professional blogger writing these farewell to traditional marriage posts. Some, like the Anchoress, whom I just can't bear to read anymore, say give in to the state and push for the Revolutionary French solution*: everyone, gay, straight, whatever goes to the courthouse and get your legal, civilly acknowledged union and let then go to your own church, synagogue, generic faintly Christian worship space, coven circle or fetish hut ...and get married according to your own rite.

As I've said before, that sounds inoffensive, at least on paper and the suggestion that Christians simply ignore the State altogether and only have Church weddings sounds interesting as well. The people who argue for this alternate solution point out that wives and children need not fear for their financial future under this plan because the State says that children born out of legal wedlock get the same as children born in wedlock and that a legal concubine of long standing can end up with just as much money as a married wife. They insist that the only way the State can pick on Christians who refuse a civil union would be if it goes after all the single mothers on welfare and all the people who are living in sin together and that's not going to happen.

These arguments are interesting in a dry, clinical sort of way. It's rather like dissecting a frog in Science class. I suspect that most of these compromisers were never really down for the cause of traditional marriage anyway. Instead of the trenches they were always in sick bay or the canteen  but never mind that for now. What all these people fail to mention is that the reason it seems like the proponents of traditional marriage are losing the fight is that, to paraphrase St. John Fisher, the fort has been betrayed. I've said before, normal people degraded and defiled marriage decades ago. We are like the Romans who woke up and were horrified when the Vandals and Visigoths broke in and started killing, looting and raping. Rome had been in decline for a long time. There were huge cracks in both civil society and in the military defenses. Their own decadence, and stupidity made it easy for the barbarians. And here we are. It's impossible to hold the line when the fort has a huge gaping hole in the wall.


*The French, really? Post Vendee, a thousand cowardly surrender jokes come to mind but you've heard them all.