When the Supreme Court of Washington state ruled unanimously against a local florist who declined to provide flowers for the wedding of a same-sex couple, it was a stunning defeat for religious liberty and conscience in the United States. The men who sought her services had been previous customers of Barronelle Stutzman’s business, and they had a good relationship. But Stutzman just felt it was wrong to participate in an event that she knew was contrary to God’s plan for marriage. There was no animus, but the court found her refusal to be an illegal act of discrimination.

Courts have rejected similar religious-liberty arguments with a photographer in New Mexico and in a case involving a Colorado baker that is now pending with the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the Washington decision came down, an article on a leading conservative website noted the silence by Christian religious leaders across the country. While organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom are making stalwart efforts with solid legal arguments to defend constitutional rights up through the Supreme Court, could it be that religious leaders are recognizing that such arguments in the court of public opinion are futile, given the current cultural environment? Is it time to start reflecting on why fewer and fewer judges are understanding and accepting religious-liberty arguments and affording people of faith the protection of such fundamental human rights that they are due?

Could the root of the problem be the same one that caused the U.S. Supreme Court to redefine marriage? What is the problem we are trying to solve? Is it that same-sex couples are permitted to make legal contracts called “marriage,” or is it that the sole civil institution that specifically unites children with their mother and father has been eliminated from the law? These two seemingly separate problems are two sides of the same coin, and how you see them depends on which side of the coin you are focused.

Should the goal be to protect exclusively our own religious liberty, or to protect the fundamental human rights of our children to discover the truth about love, sexuality, marriage and family? Or can both goals be advanced at the same time?

I believe they can.

The root of the crisis is that the majority has forgotten the real meaning and purpose of marriage. I will use the term “marriage reality” to distinguish the original institution from the current word “marriage” that has been redefined in law (and in culture). “Marriage” is commonly understood as an adult-centric committed relationship between a loving man and woman, or, as redefined in law, between two people. That description is not “marriage reality.” The word “marriage” no longer means the institution we know as the foundation of the regular family.

By law, redefined “marriage” is unrelated to the bearing and education of children. To claim otherwise is now an act of discrimination against couples who by nature cannot bear children.

While the word “marriage” can be applied to the union of a man and woman who enter into it as the foundation of the regular family, that is legally no longer the purpose of the word or institution. In this new legal and cultural context, children, sadly, must be taught to accept that marriage is a lifestyle choice for adults, with no connection to having children or a family.

The corollary is the lie that having more families with children deprived of their mother and father united in marriage is a good thing.

Is that what we want our children to learn?

Understanding that the word “marriage” has been deconstructed to mean a committed relationship for loving adults gives insight into why it appears discriminatory for a florist to choose to serve one couple and not another.

That seems to be how the deciding Supreme Court justices looked at the argument also.

Merely arguing on the basis of religious liberty or conscience protection comes across in our culture as a self-serving way to protect an ideological opinion. Yes, we must defend our First Amendment rights and protest any unjust law or ruling that equates acts of conscience with discrimination. But such a protest does nothing to advance the understanding of the true meaning and purpose of marriage.

Experience tells us that continuing the same line of argumentation will only lead to endless conflict and no resolution.

Yet it is compelling and right to want to protest and to not cooperate with something that conflicts with what we know to be true.

Protest over public policy is a well-established and well-protected tradition in our democratic republic. So the question becomes: How  can we protest and resist in a way that avoids what people misperceive as discrimination and reframes marriage reality in a way people can understand?

We can take a lesson from the evangelists and missionaries who did not assert rights or criticize pagan cultures, but brought the Good News and shared it in different ways with different peoples so that they could understand. They provoked contemplation about things that their audiences had never heard, had never thought of or had forgotten. People are naturally attracted to the beauty of truth when they hear it and when it corresponds with their own experiences.

Why not reintroduce marriage reality by starting with the simple question, “Do we need a civil institution that specifically unites children with their mother and father?” This precisely describes marriage reality between a man and a woman without getting into charged discussions about issues that lead to misunderstanding and conflict.

The question reveals the fullness of marriage. Not every married couple has children, but every child has a mother and father and a right to be born in a family with them united in marriage. Don’t we need such an institution?

What if bakers, florists and others protest for a greater good, a common good? We have no animus against same-sex couples, but we have a right to not cooperate with an unjust law that has eliminated the sole institution that unites children with their mother and father.

We will not rest until justice is done by restoring it. We will not rest until the reality of marriage once again becomes the privileged institution that unites children with their mother and father and is promoted by every law, every public institution and in every school curriculum.

William B. May is president

of Catholics for the

Common Good.