And 31 consecutive defeats for same-sex marriage in state referenda testifies that Middle America sees the new morality as the artificial invention of pseudo-intellectuals to put a high gloss on a low lifestyle.

Not until recent decades have many in America or the West argued that homosexuality is natural and normal. As late as 1973, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Today, anyone who agrees with that original APA assessment is himself or herself said to be afflicted with a mental disorder: homophobia.

The world has turned upside down. What was criminal vice in the 1950s—homosexuality and abortion—is not only constitutionally protected, but a mark of social progress.

Yet, just as busing for racial balance led to violence, white flight and the ruin of urban schools, this social experiment is not going to be without consequences. And it is the military that will endure those consequences.

Yet, again, if we believe our armed forces to be the best in the world, why are we doing this, against the advice of countless senior officers and NCOs? What is the motivation other than the payoff of a campaign debt?

What happens now to Evangelical Christian and conservative Catholic chaplains who preach that homosexuality is a sinful and shameful practice? Will they be severed from the service as homophobes?

That cannot be far behind when the Family Research Council, a respected organization of religious and social conservatives that has fought the homosexual agenda from same-sex marriage to gay adoptions, has now been declared by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be a “hate group.”

The advance of what was once a radical agenda has accelerated.

In 2004, John Kerry may have lost Ohio and the presidency because same-sex marriage was on the ballot in almost a dozen states, bringing out committed social conservatives to the polls. Six years later, the gay rights agenda is imposed by Congress and Obama on the 82nd and 101st.

Let the reader decide if the direction America is headed in is toward those “sunny uplands,” or straight downhill.