Ordering a record returned from a stored procedure

I am pulling a report from the database using a stored procedure but cannot
get the information to return in a specific order unless I hardcode the
order by clause.

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION submissionreport(INTEGER, DATE, TEXT) RETURNS
setof submissionrec AS '
DECLARE
result submissionrec%rowtype;
hmhmkey ALIAS for $1;
submissiondate ALIAS for $2;
sort ALIAS for $3;

BEGIN
RAISE NOTICE ''The sort order should be: %.'', sort;
FOR result IN
SELECT
(..... select all necessary fields ...)
FROM
(.... tables ...)
WHERE
(... contraints)

ORDER BY sort
LOOP
RETURN next result;
END LOOP;

RETURN result;

END;
' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

What am I missing? The returned data is ordered if the "Order By" clause has
the values hard coded but doesn't seem to read the "sort" variable.

Any help would be appreciated.

Kent Anderson