If Clinton were to issue an executive order repealing the military's ban on gays effective January 21, liberals like me would celebrate. But there is some legitimacy to Colin Powell's concern that such an order would dramatically disrupt the military and undermine discipline.

Fortunately, Clinton understands that one of his most important roles as president will be that of national educator. He will be responsible for explaining to the American people why he opposes the discrimination against homosexuals, and persuading them to agree with him.

He will have some help. For example, the Roman Catholic Church has taken a stance against anti-gay discrimination. In a new universal catechism issued this week, the church admits that homosexuals "do not choose their homosexual condition," and declares, "All manner of unjust discrimination should be avoided with respect to them..."

Now, words like "condition" and "unjust" may make some nervous, but the injunction against discrimination is better than nothing. What more can we expect from an institution that condemns homosexual acts as "intrinsically disorderly. They go against natural law"? (That's from the new catechism also.)

Additionally, as Clinton is aware, a report by the General Accounting Office last June found that the military ban on homosexuals cost the Pentagon over $27 million annually and "perpetuated a policy that was unsupported by science and sociology," the New York Times reported.

Another study several years ago concluded that homosexuals posed no more of a security risk (from susceptibility to blackmail threats) than anyone else in the military. And Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has called the blackmail rationale "an old chestnut."

There is another argument too, and Clinton has already made some reference to it. He promised to "focus sharply on the fact that we do have people who are homosexuals who served our country with distinction, who were never kicked out of the military." The reason, of course, is that they remained in the closet.

Ending the ban on gays in the military will not create a stampede of homosexuals running for the nearest recruiting office. Nor will it dramatically change the number of gays that now serve in the armed forces. But it will allow those gays the same freedom now exercised by their peers in the military: the freedom to disclose their sexual preference without fear of losing the right to serve their country.

If Clinton is to assuage the fears of liberals who kept their mouths shut while he was trumpeting his moderatism, he needs to take these arguments before the public, and forcefully. He is, unquestionably, a skilled debater, orator and is a master of facts. He should use those talents to make the case against discrimination as effectively as he made the case for an amorphous thing called "change" during the campaign.