EJ Dionne of the Washington Post almost gets it:
As someone who has been arguing for years that liberals should show more respect for people of faith, I’m happy that more Democrats are now saying the same…. What’s required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are “moral values” and that war and peace are “life issues.” As my wife and I prepared our three kids for school the day after the day after, we shared our outrage that we in Blue America are cast as opponents of “family values” simply because we don’t buy the right wing’s agenda. No political faction can be allowed to assert a monopoly on the family.
The reason that the Republicans are able to successfully assert a monopoly on the family is that the Democrats are married – or might be if more of them believed in the concept – to groups that are inherently inimical to the family, to traditional morals and to the Christian and Western heritage.
Social justice is not justice, otherwise it would not need the adjective. Inclusion is not a moral value; Jesus Christ came to divide, not to unite. The progressive agenda, beginning with women’s suffrage, has wreaked havoc on the family, not just in America but across the dying continent of Europe too. On every issue that directly affects the family – abortion, taxes, divorce, gay rights – the Democrats are utterly devoted to destroying most civilizing institution the world has ever known.
Respect is good, and Dionne should be praised for his support for interideological civility. But even respect will do the Democrats no good unless and until they wake up and realize that no one who places special importance on the traditional nuclear family wants anything to do with their cultural suicide.