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When the history of gays in the military is written, Elaine Donnelly may go down as a person who did more than any other to shatter the barrier that keeps homosexuals from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.

Not that Donnelly favors allowing gays in the military — she believes just the opposite. However, her testimony before a Congressional committee in July did more to discredit the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy than any critic could have hoped.

The nation has changed considerably since 1993, when “don’t ask, don’t tell” — the policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve as long they manage to keep their sexual orientation a secret — was forged in the early years of the Clinton Administration. Back then, when only 44 percent of Americans believed gays should be allowed to serve, military leaders could plausibly argue that the presence of gays would undermine morale and cohesion in a fighting force that disapproved of homosexuality. Today, 75 percent of Americans believe gays should be allowed to serve openly. Attitudes toward gays and lesbians have transformed just as quickly as racial attitudes transformed during the 1950s and 1960s.

Yet there was Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee and painting a lurid picture of gays as sexual predators and indiscriminate speaders of HIV. In her opening statement, she listed examples of sexual misconduct by gay and lesbian soldiers, one of which dated back to 1974. She somehow managed to drag disgraced Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s incident in a Minneapolis airport rest room into her testimony.

By that logic, examples of misconduct by heterosexuals make all heterosexuals unfit for military service. Or perhaps examples of misconduct by Wisconsin residents — there’s the sheriff’s deputy who killed six people in Crandon — means nobody from Wisconsin can ever be recruited.

Donnelly also argued it’s impossible to admit gays without an extreme version of gay affirmative action. That’s absurd. The military already admits racial and religious minorities and holds everyone, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity, to the same high standards of conduct. Gays and lesbians aren’t asking for special treatment; they are asking to be judged by the same standards as their heterosexual peers.

If Donnelly’s dark view of gays and lesbians is correct, not only should gays be excluded from the military, they should be excluded as teachers, custodians, assembly-line workers or from any workplace where people interact with each other. Most Americans disagree. They have moved past Donnelly’s ugly and cruel stereotypes and accepted gays and lesbians as legitimate human beings deserving of full participation in American society. That participation should include service in the United States military.