The late Judge Robert Bork wrote prophetically in 2004 that the only viable option left for protecting the institution of traditional marriage in the United States is amending the Constitution to define marriage.

Without the amendment, Bork predicted, the U.S. Supreme Court will “almost certainly” create “a national constitutional right to homosexual marriage.”

But amending the Constitution is a tall order, and some who oppose legalization of same-sex marriage also oppose amending the Constitution.

So without Bork’s sole remedy, events have proceeded in the exact direction he predicted they would. He was just off on his timing, predicting in 2004 that without our amending the Constitution, the Supreme Court would legalize same-sex marriage across the nation “within two or three years.”

In 2013, the Supreme Court threw out the Defense of Marriage Act, so now the federal government must treat same-sex marriage no differently than it treats traditional marriage.

This week, the court will begin the process of reaching finality on this issue as it hears arguments dealing with the question of the constitutionality of state prohibitions of same-sex marriage.

Bork’s concern was the ongoing cultural degradation in America, in which judges have become tools of popular culture rather than guardians of the law. The legal redefinition of marriage is just the latest, according to Bork, of “a series of cultural debacles forced upon us by judges following no law but their own predilections.”

There are many famous quotations from America’s Founding Fathers — George Washington, John Adams and others — noting the inseparability of a free nation from the principles of religion and morality.

French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville — author of “Democracy in America,” which many view as the greatest book ever written about the United States — wrote in 1835, “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”

Yet over a short period of time — less than 20 years — the attitude of Americans about a core and central institution to our culture, marriage, has been turned on its head.

In 1996, according to polling by Gallup, 68 percent of Americans rejected — and 27 percent supported — the proposition that same-sex marriage “should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.”

By 2011, just 15 years later, 53 percent of Americans supported this proposition, and 45 percent rejected it.

Such rapid change in attitudes toward an institution so deeply rooted in the nation’s culture and toward the religious truths that have defined us could only happen through the massive and ongoing propagandizing against traditional values by what Bork called the “cultural aristocracy” — the news media, university faculties, many churches, certain foundations, television networks and Hollywood.

Yet if leaders in these various institutions of our nation’s left-wing elite look in the rearview mirror to their own family histories, histories of Christians and Jews arriving and settling in America, they most certainly, overwhelmingly, will find families — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents — defined by the very traditional values that their offspring today throw to the trash.

Central to the propaganda being sold is the notion that embracing sexual behaviors that our religions prohibit represents progress.

But in fact, these behaviors are more ancient than our religions. Our religions were the answer to these destructive behaviors.

And no, this is not about freedom. Few do not believe or accept that every American should be free to live as he or she chooses.

This is a battle about redefining the values of our nation’s culture and, hence, redefining our nation itself.

Almost half the nation still opposes redefining marriage. A Supreme Court decision prohibiting bans on same-sex marriage in states would negate ballot initiatives in 19 states codifying traditional marriage.

There should be no doubt that the many who understand the importance of traditional marriage to America will never stop fighting.