Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993                   TAG: 9306150374
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

GAY BAN

That, remember, was what conservatives said of former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater when he was the Republican nominee for president in 1964.

Now, Goldwater is saying basically the same about President Bill Clinton, regarding Clinton's efforts to lift the ban against homosexuals serving in the military.

In an article reprinted on today's Commentary page, Goldwater says conservatives fighting to keep the ban are ignoring their own movement's core principle, that "government should stay out of people's private lives."

Goldwater, former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is no stranger to matters of the military. "You don't need to be `straight' to fight and die for your country," he writes. "You just need to shoot straight."

The old hand certainly shoots straight. If Goldwater offers uncommon Republican support for Clinton on this thorny issue, he also makes clear he doesn't cotton much to the president's bent for compromise.

Clinton has said he may agree to the so-called don't-ask, don't-tell policy, under which homosexuals could serve as long as they don't go public with their sexual orientation.

That may be the best practical solution now available, given the opposition in Congress to lifting the ban. But it is neither a sound nor a permanent answer.

It will not last, because it runs against Americans' fundamental values and common sense - including their preference for honest, straightfoward talk, like the kind Goldwater offers on the opposite page.