By Jeff Cleghorn

The 100 or so academics that prosecuted the misguided Solomon Amendment lawsuit have caused harm to the effort to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Their strategy was to use intolerance and exclusion as weapons against the military to influence the Pentagon to end its own policy of intolerance and exclusion toward gays -- how shortsighted and ill conceived. The lawsuit appeared to be driven more by an anti-military animus than by a genuine desire to help lift the ban.

The Solomon Amendment withholds federal funding from universities that bar military recruiters from their campuses. The military discriminates against gays and many universities require that prospective employers seeking on-campus access to recruit promise not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The Solomon plaintiffs argued that their freedom of speech and freedom of association was somehow impaired by allowing military recruiters on their campuses. The Supreme Court, by an 8-0 count, disagreed.

The Solomon lawsuit, at its core, was about seeking to build an additional wall between gays and mainstream America. It is mind boggling that a group of people who are so smart could do something so dumb. Losing a unanimous judgment at the Supreme Court no more helps the cause of lifting the ban on service by gays in the U.S. military than did Gen. Custer's slaughter at the battle of Little Big Horn help the cause of domesticating the Indians. Martyrdom may be an OK tactic for revolutions, but it is a foolish approach to influencing American jurisprudence.

We need more fair-minded people in the armed forces, not fewer. The demographics of the military consist of mostly working class Americans largely from the rural South and West. These are the people who, for whatever reason, continue to volunteer to serve -- even during this time of war. We know that many of these mostly young enlistees are gay. According to the Urban Institute, there are some 65,000 gay and lesbian troops serving in uniform today.

There's a striking disconnect between the thousands of gays who willingly serve our country in uniform, and the hundreds of intellectuals who recklessly prosecuted the Solomon lawsuit. Gays fight for our country because they want to; it is an all-volunteer force. The movement to lift the ban must broaden its target audience beyond newspaper editorial boards. In stark contrast to the Solomon lawsuit's strategy of isolationism, a new generation of gay veterans has stepped forward to share their stories to their fellow Americans.

The Call to Duty Tour features a platoon of gay veterans traveling the country, targeting conservative audiences in mostly "red" states to encourage honest dialogue about the service by gays in the military. I had the privilege recently to see a presentation on the tour at a small military college in rural north Georgia. These courageous young gay veterans use the vocabulary of the military and project patriotism, confidence and shared values. The tour is using a positive message and image to find common ground and build bridges -- an approach distinctly rejected by the Solomon plaintiffs.

Those of us who have served in the military know from our experiences that most people in the military are reasonable. The Call to Duty Tour is an affirmative effort to do something constructive by focusing on what gay and straight Americans have in common.

The law professors who brought the Solomon lawsuit, as they lick their wounds following their Supreme Court fiasco, should take heed of the success being achieved by the tour. The military is not the enemy. The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is the enemy. Instead of trying to tear down the military and build more barriers between gays and straights, the Solomon plaintiffs should now lend their considerable brain power to the smarter effort to lift the ban by identifying and promulgating arguments that speak to those in the vast American middle, and not only to those on the political left.

- Jeff Cleghorn is a former U.S. Army major, an attorney, and director of the Military Education Initiative For more information, go to www.military-education.org.