Social conservatives have condemned the U.S. Military Academy's Cadet Chapel at West Point for hosting its first gay wedding.

On Saturday, Brenda Sue Fulton and Penelope Gnesin married in a ceremony conducted by Army Chaplain Col. J. Wesley Smith of Dover Air Force Base.

Fulton, a West Point graduate, serves as a presidential appointee to the West Point Board of Visitors. She is also the executive director of Knights Out, an organization of LGBT West Point graduates, and serves on the OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors.

The wedding comes more than a year after the military ended “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” the policy which for 18 years banned gay and bisexual troops from serving openly.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), a group which opposed repeal of the law, said such ceremonies were a consequence of the new policy.

“Even though Congress made it very clear and it's in the legislation that they intended the Defense of Marriage Act to be respected and honored on military bases, several times now the administration has allowed various branches of the service to disregard that,” Donnelly told One News Now. “This is the most blatant example. I think West Point is going to ... disappoint many of its alumnus community. And I think that some people may start to question, 'What is the purpose of the military service academies?'”

Tony Perkins, president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC), criticized the military for “defying” the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

“Army officials are experts at following orders – except when it comes to federal marriage law,” Perkins said in a statement. “For the second time in two weeks, the brass at West Point opened its gates to lesbian 'wedding' ceremonies in direct defiance of the Defense of Marriage Act. Adding insult to the law's injury, Saturday's service was held in the Cadet Chapel, a 176-year-old house of worship that has been the heartbeat of the Academy's Christian community for almost two centuries. Brenda Fulton, one of the 'brides,' said the Chapel was a particularly meaningful site, because it's where she first heard the Cadet Prayer: 'Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong' – words that, in the end, even West Point failed to live up to. Fulton and her same-sex partner marched down the aisle knowing full well they were leading the military's own processional away from the rule of law.”