Anyone who believes America’s culture wars are behind her should have started out Friday reading The Washington Times.

The headlines on the three top stories on page one read:

“California judges asked to say if they are gay.”

“‘Tebow Bill’ for home-schoolers dies in Virginia Senate panel.”

“Opt-out on birth control defeated in Senate.”

The California judges story dealt with the lately passed Judicial Appointments Demographic Inclusion Act, which mandates a survey of all of the state’s 1,600 judges—to find out how many are homosexual.

Purpose of the law: “Promote and increase the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the … judicial branch.”

The questionnaire sent to the judges asked each to identify themselves by race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.

Forty percent of the judges balked, refusing to reveal their sexual orientation. One percent said they were gay. One percent said they were lesbian. One judge identified himself as transgendered.

Welcome to 21st century America.

Under the old American ideal, the lawyers who proved the most qualified by wisdom and experience were to be elevated to the bench.

The new ideal is that California’s judiciary should mirror the diversity of the state. Whites, Asians, Hispanics, males, females, blacks, gays, straights and bisexuals are to be represented on the bench in the proportion that they are found in the population.

Yet another triumph of diversity over excellence.

Were an Olympic team or symphony orchestra to be chosen on the basis of this kind of diversity, they would be a joke.

The “Tebow Bill,” named for Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, who played high school football while being home-schooled, was crafted to allow home-schooled Virginia kids to try out for the tennis, football, baseball and basketball teams at their local high schools.

The Virginia House approved the measure 59-39.

But a Senate panel sank the Tebow Bill on an 8-7 vote, denying 38,000 Virginia home-schoolers their last chance to play high school sports. Every Democrat on the panel voted as the Virginia Education Association dictated.

But it is the top story in the Times, about the 51-48 defeat of the Blunt Amendment, that best reveals the shifting correlation of forces in the religious and cultural wars sundering the country.