Imposing a Christian worldview using the ballot box is not working anymore for US conservative Christians. Three leading commentators say that the “Christian Right” no longer has the electoral clout to get its own way.

In the wake of President Obama’s re-election and three out of four states voting for gay marriage at the same poll, a re-assessment of the chances of success for social conservatives is taking place.

“As a Christian and as a pastor, I will never retreat on the issue of marriage, “It’s just too important,” Southern Baptist blogger Denny Burk writes. “I will continue to teach and preach what the scripture says on whatever platform the Lord allows me to stand on. As a citizen, I will continue to support policies that protect marriage, and I will speak in favor of them publicly.

“That doesn’t mean, however, that those arguments will have any traction in the current culture. Nor does it mean there will be a viable political coalition to carry them forward into actual policy. In fact, I’m pretty certain there won’t be.”

Burk is echoing the New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat: “…the issue of gay marriage, where my side of the argument has lost enough ground with voters to render the Republican Party’s official position on the issue — and particularly the call for a never-gonna-happen constitutional amendment — an empty gesture to a now-collapsed consensus, which is likely to soon alienate more voters than it mobilizes. It’s probably no longer a question of “if” but “when” the party beats a strategic retreat on the issue.”

Another influential conservative, Rod Dreher suggests a retreat to defensible borders. “SSM (same sex marriage) opponents would do well to abandon the fight against SSM, and instead focus on the threat SSM poses to religious liberty — this, while there is still the prospect of energizing a majority of people to protect religious liberty,” he opined in the American Conservative.

There are many conservatives who want to fight on. Traditionalists can still win the cultural battle, says Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). Brian Brown from NOM told Baptist Press that he thought the loss was due to being outspent. “This is a bit of a David and Goliath fight. The Human Rights Campaign [the nation’s largest gay activist group] has been around for a long time and has a $40 million budget. National Organization for Marriage has been around since 2007, and we gave more money this year [to the four blue states] than we ever have before — $5.5 million … We were fighting in four states, and the other side was just able to completely overwhelm us on the fundraising front.”

In Australia attention will turn to NSW where notice of a “State Marriage Equality Bill” has been given to the legislative council. The bill is still being drafted, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. It will be introduced by MLCS from three parties: the Green’s Cate Faehrmann, Labor’s Penny Sharpe and the National’s Trevor Khan.