For many years I wrote in defence of the traditional and religious definition of marriage. I spoke to and wrote for conservative and religious audiences in Australia and overseas. I tried to describe, and by doing so preserve, the meaning of traditional and religious marriage in a public square denuded of religious concepts.
There came a time, however, when I realised that the thing I was describing, this idea of traditional and religious marriage that I believed was (and still believe is) worth defending, was not at all at risk from reforming the Marriage Act. It just clicked. What I actually meant when I described marriage was Catholic marriage: a sacrament. That will not change with careful reform of the Marriage Act to allow for same-sex civil marriage.