The debate over same-sex marriage seems to have cooled in the last year or two. No one in either major political party seems to want to touch it as a political issue, and certainly no one wants to be seen as a gay-bashing bigot, so most people, though firmly against the idea, just keep quiet about it. Furthermore, it seems impossible to articulate compelling arguments against same-sex unions in secular terms.

That hasn't kept some folks from trying. Carolyn Graglia here reviews two newish books dealing with the topic: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1511/article_detail.asp Blankenhorn is a thoughtful man, and no doubt his book is worth considering. Look out, too, for ISI Books' forthcoming Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die by the late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. It's less social-sciencey than most books on this topic, but it is tremendously well informed, historically.

But where is all this going? Fox-Genovese understands better than most that the fact that we are even having this argument is a symptom of advanced cultural decay. No law or constitutional amendment is likely to arrest that.