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By David M. Drucker | June 30, 2015 | 12:01 am

Same-sex marriage supporters wear just married shirts while celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court...
Carmen Fowler LaBerge practically predicted the Supreme Court's decision legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Back in September, the religious liberty activist and leader of the Presbyterian Lay Committee said bluntly that social conservatives were losing the debate over marriage to advocates of government-sanctioned same-sex unions. On Monday, the Washington Examiner reconnected with Fowler LaBerge to get her thoughts on the Supreme Court ruling and what comes next for Americans unhappy with the outcome.

Her message to them: It's going to get a whole lot worse, possibly for years, before it gets better. Fowler LaBerge, married to husband Jim LaBerge since 2011, lives near Nashville.

Examiner: You said when we last talked that your side was losing the debate. Are you surprised that, less than a year later, same sex marriage is the law of the land?

Fowler LaBerge: What surprises me is maybe not even the Supreme Court's ruling but the level of social, political celebration, as if it was an overwhelming majority of the court. Seeing the White House used as a piece of propaganda as if this is now universally understood as our public policy, that is probably what surprises me the most, the willingness of huge sectors of the media and the population to be fully coopted by one side of the conversation.

Examiner: What did you think of the legal reasoning the majority used in reaching its decision?

Fowler LaBerge: The reasoning given now opens the possibility of those who are interested in polygamous or poly-amorous marriage. There is nothing in the decision that would now prevent the argument being made that polygamous or poly-amorous relationships ought not also be available to all citizens of the United States.

Examiner: How should Christians, and indeed, all Americans view this court decision, if they disagreed with it?

Fowler LaBerge: A lot of people point to this as similar to the Roe v. Wade decision and the answer to, how do I respond to it. If, as a Christian I am convicted that life deserves protection, that, even though Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, I continue to raise my conscientious objection to that at every opportunity and I continue to work within appropriate ways to at least limit it if not seek to have it overturned. That is the reasoned approach that I would expect most Christians who I engage with … that's the approach they will look for.

Examiner: Does this decision undermine the Supreme Court's legitimacy?

Fowler LaBerge: I do not agree that it undermines their legitimacy. It's a 5-4 ruling. I think people should read the dissents.

Examiner: What does marriage mean for very religious people and what might a secular, or less religious person, not understand?

Fowler LaBerge: I don't think that people who are unfamiliar with the Bible — I don't think that they know that marriage is the image that God uses to describe the relationship of the church to Jesus Christ. I do not think they know that, when culturally, we begin to redefine marriage, it threatens the core understanding of the church in her relationship to her lord and savior Jesus Christ. That is, for Christians, the fundamental issue.

Examiner: What is the difference between opposing same sex marriage and opposing, for instance, interracial marriage?

Fowler LaBerge: Marriage is something that God alone is responsible for defining. Interracial marriage is not addressed in the same way in the scriptures as is homosexual behavior and so there was, at least, a very significant racial component to that conversation. Even those interracial marriages were one man and one woman, they were still in line with the complimentarity of the man and the woman, as created by God, which is the image that Jesus chooses to use when he talks about marriage. That's what I would point to, an interracial marriage you are still talking about one man and one woman, you are still respecting the complimentarity of God's design for that particular relationship. In the bible, when you use the term 'race,' it was really prohibitions against the Hebrews, who then became the Jews, these rules and regulations about them intermarrying with people of other [faiths] because it was going to introduce, then, into the Jewish religious community — it was going to introduce all these foreign Gods.

Examiner: What does the court decision mean for religious liberty?

Fowler LaBerge: Both sides are using religious liberty language. It's clearly the issue, it's just now going to be a question of how the culture at large interprets what people are saying on both of those sides and which definition and understanding of religious liberty maybe finds solid standing. When it comes to individuals, the question of whether I'm going to be allowed to continue to have a religious conscience on this issue, whether or not that gets trumped by accusation of discrimination against another person — because in our culture, the accusation of discrimination is going to win every time.

For pastors, the question is going to come down to whether or not they're going to be compelled, because when they perform a marriage, at some level they are serving as an agent of the state. We're either going to see churches discontinue doing the civil component of the marriage and move what happens inside a church or a synagogue or another religious institution, and that becoming an act of holy matrimony — you'll see language that moves in the direction of sacramental language — and you'll see it separated from. So people can go and get their marriage license from the courthouse and then they will have this purely religious ceremony at some other point in time.

Disclosure: The author's wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.