Religious people who are anti-gay rights would do well to accept that they have already lost the argument over gay marriage.

Discrimination against homosexuals is now illegal. Inviting homosexuals to have access to the same marital rights as heterosexuals is a legal inevitability.

That said, there has also been a lot of media manipulation of opinion on this issue through fear, threats and intimidation.

Western media has made liberals terrified of so-called theocracy; whereas it has made conservatives terrified that gay Nazis wearing sparkly jackboots are going to be kicking down their doors and dragging them off to the lion’s den. Neither fear has any real justification.

We are not at war with each other. It is an illusion. Good people are just somewhat at odds, while holding to many of the same principles such as love, equality, tolerance and fraternity.

Fear is the enemy, not our respective creeds. The media shows us Fred Phelps to make non-Christians feel threatened. They also show Christians gay activists that want the State to force churches to perform gay marriage ceremonies. In both cases, liberty and rights are marketed as being under attack by an implacable enemy.

There is money to be made in exploiting extremism to create fear and mistrust on both sides. By reducing moral reasoning to team sports. Us vs Them.

The truth, as I see it, is that we do not hate each other nearly as much as each side is being told they are hated by the other.

I love the Church, but we have to ask ourselves why are some of us holding out against gay marriage? To what end? Let me be clear, I am not asking you to come out and openly endorse gay marriage.

I am asking you to carefully consider whether Christians really have any moral or political high ground on the issue of marriage. Because let’s be honest here, if (and that’s an “if”) marriage is broken, it is not the homosexuals that broke it.

Protestant Christianity embraced divorce and remarriage while the West was still very much a “Christian” civilisation. Divorce allows couples to split what God has joined together. Christian divorce rates are only slightly lower, depending on whose research results you embrace, than the divorce rates of non-Christians. Where are the heterosexual Christian petitions to end No-Fault Divorce? What about contraception? Up until the Lambeth Conference in 1930, every Protestant Church in the world agreed with the Roman Catholics that it is evil to deliberately thwart God’s gift of life through contraception.

But then the Anglican Church gave its blessing to contraception and the rest of the Protestant world suddenly found permission to use contraception hiding in the pages of Scripture.

Marriage evolved, partly because it kept the male animal from spreading his seed and simply moving on. Biology did not make us gentlemen, nor make women ladies.

We have had to come up with conventions to direct our behaviour. The legal recognition of marriage is a result.

To give Judeo-Christianity its due, the Church divinised it with sacraments. Although wives were also once owned as chattel within marriage. It is fair to say that our views on proper marital relations, including polygamy, are not the same as they were when the canon of Scripture was written.

Christians “broke” the paramount emphasis on child-raising by permitting divorce and contraception. Marriage now is primarily a legal contract of love and trust between two consenting adults.

There are, thus, no practical reasons to exclude homosexuals from marriage.

To Christians who oppose gay marriage, I suggest that if you really want to show your commitment to a traditionally Christian idea of family, then you should be marrying for life, no exceptions.

You will not use contraception and you will raise as many children as is biologically possible. Heck, you do that and you will outbreed all the “unrighteous” within a generation and restore the Christian West! But will you all do that?

Opposing marital rights for a tiny minority of same-sex attracted people is a lot easier than raising all those children.

Understand that I am not asking any evangelically-minded person to change their view on gay marriage, although I understand why my article could be interpreted as advocating surrender.

Others may decry it as too pragmatic and not truly progressive. So be it.

I have offered what I hope is a helpful way of advancing dialogue on this issue, by meeting Christians on their own ground, according to their current position on marriage. I suggest that this is a more respectful way forward than by either taking potshots at the Bible, or using its verses to make a case against gay marriage.

The Bible is frequently misinterpreted, but compassion for others is always well received.

• Stephen Notman is a barrister, writer, and College lecturer.