Bill Clinton is getting far more attention than he wants over the issue of gays in the military. But he deserves every bit of it--and more.

The president-elect has promised to put an end to regulations that require homosexuals to remain in the closet if they want to serve their country. I believe Clinton when he says he genuinely opposes discrimination by the military, but I also believe it's an issue he would rather avoid.

After all, the man is notoriously averse to conflict. But he's already gotten a taste of the kind of controversy the gays-in-uniform issue engenders, and whether he likes it or not, this issue will be the first major test of his ability to satisfy the broad coalition that elected him without disappointing the liberals who represent his roots.

That's right: liberals. You haven't heard much from us lately. We stayed out of Clinton's way during the campaign because we wanted him to win the election. We tolerated all that talk about him being a "moderate" and a "New Democrat" but we never believed it. In fact, the one time we agreed with soon-to-be-former President George Bush was when he insisted that Clinton is a closet liberal.

But what if we were wrong? What if Bill Clinton really turns out to be the moderate he has insisted he is?

So far, he has given us little reason to worry: after all, AIDS and the environment were among the first words out of his mouth after he won the election.

But he has treaded delicately around the issue of homosexuals in the military, and we liberals want a demonstration of decisiveness from a man long criticized for equivocation.

The issue is a weathervane for his approach to social issues, and so far Clinton has been a model of moderation. He has only addressed the ban on gays in response to queries by reporters, and then he has sounded disconcerted and afraid to offend.

He has not retreated from his oppposition to anti-gay discrimination, but he has also avoided any direct expression of support for gay rights. He has repeated his intention to end the ban, but he has also promised not to make any quick changes, saying he understands the concerns of people like General Colin Powell and Senator Sam Nunn.

These concessions made him sound indecisive, compromising, unwilling to take a strong leadership position on a controversial issue.

Compromise is excusable--in fact, it is essential if he expects to get anything done. But indecision is not, especially regarding an explicit campaign promise to a group of people whose support for him would have been ambivalent but for his quiet reassurances. Now that the election is over, we liberals want to see Clinton demonstrate his liberalism.

That means he had better reiterate his firm commitment to ending discrimination in the military. He needs to declare loudly, publicly and unequivocally that the ban on gays will not stand. Period. Then, he can begin to discuss the way to do it.

If Clinton leaves us with no doubt about his intentions, we will be willing to compromise on the method. We understand that ardent and uncompromising radicalism may be an appropriate voice for anti-establishment dissenters, but it is not appropriate for the constituents of a sympathetic president.

We realize that it will not be easy to change the homophobic attitudes that are rampant in the military.

Take, for example, the ignorance of James Pearson, an Army mechanic who asked, "If you work with some guy who's gay, how can you be sure you won't get AIDS? It would make me feel unsure, unsafe. I would definitely get out in a heartbeat."

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.