Well, you can't accuse John Derbyshire of being shy of controversy. He is, in fact, admirably honest in both his refusal to articulate a reason for conservative resistance to change and his conviction that it's still right. What he does not do is what Burke did: articulate a moment when conservatives embrace change, because resisting it is more destructive to a society's coherence than embracing it. That's a prudential question. In my view, on marriage, the moment for conservative embrace of this social reform was in the last decade.
