“We have been saying, ‘Look, same-sex marriage is inevitable in American culture,” Moore continued. “It doesn’t mean we should stop talking about it … It means we need to start preparing our churches for a new generation.”

Moore’s fallback position — there’s no other way to describe it — is to insist that once the marriage fight is lost, the beliefs of Americans who oppose homosexual marriage on religious grounds be respected. While Moore rejected those who “suggest, ‘Let’s simply abandon the question of marriage altogether and simply deal with religious liberty issues,'” there’s little doubt he’s putting new emphasis on liberty and less on manning the barricades against gay marriage.

Moore’s position fits perfectly with a recent assessment by the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney: “Conservatives see religious liberty arguments as the last redoubt in the culture war: You guys won your gay marriages, permissive abortion laws, taxpayer-subsidized birth control, and divorce-on-demand; let us just live our lives according to our own consciences.”