That doesn't mean that we should be complacent about the current state of American society. It was precisely the well-justified alarm about losing big battles that got people focussed on turning things around and winning the wars. Many of the tactics and strategies of those who have been trying to defend traditional values have been virtually guaranteed to lose battles. If they persist unchanged, the war will indeed be lost. But we are not there yet.
Many cultural conservatives analogize the abortion issue to the moral struggle against slavery.
The analogy is apt, especially since it was religious conservatives in 18th century England who launched the crusade against slavery that ultimately destroyed this inhuman institution around the world. What is sad is how many religious conservatives today ignore the political strategy that brought down slavery. Worse, today's cultural conservatives are following the opposite strategy and are losing as a result. While the 18th century British evangelical leaders were morally opposed to slavery, they did not make their first political objective the immediate abolition of this whole entrenched system that had existed for thousands of years in all kinds of societies around the world. That was what they wanted, but they knew that they were not about to get it.