My hat’s off to Barack Obama and the leaders of the Pentagon for redressing a fundamental injustice in the military.

And that, of course, is the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

This was discriminatory and foolish and counterproductive from the very start.

Discriminatory because heterosexuals in the military didn’t have to keep their private lives to themselves.

Foolish, because other militaries, like Israel’s, have long let gays and lesbians serve openly, and it has not affected their readiness. So, too, with Great Britain, which, after all, was a founding member of the “coalition of the willing.” U.S. soldiers served with openly gay and lesbian British soldiers, without their presence undermining morale.

Counterproductive because “don’t ask, don’t tell” resulted in the dismissal of thousands of dedicated, skillful, intelligent troops at a time when we crucially needed their skills, their intelligence, and their dedication.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” also rewarded dishonesty and punished candor. No hiring policy of the U.S. government should do that, as Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, so eloquently said:

"No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. . . . For me, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, ever the loyal apparatchik, also threw his considerable weight behind lifting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Even Colin Powell has come around.

But not John McCain, who used to make a big deal out of deferring to the views of the brass, but now that the brass takes a more enlightened view, McCain doesn’t care what they think and expresses his “disappointment” in them.

As the Washington Post reported, McCain in 20006 said: "The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”

Maybe McCain thought that day would never come. But it arrived, and he showed himself to be a hypocrite.

McCain is miles behind another Republican senator and presidential candidate from Arizona, who once famously said of gays in the military, “You don’t need to be straight to be in the military. You just have to be able to shoot straight.”

President Obama, under the gun from all quarters, could have tried to duck this issue.

He could have told his long-suffering supporters in the LGBT community that the jobs issue was too important, or that the health care issue was too important, or that the Massachusetts defeat was too alarming to take on this controversial issue at this time.

But he didn’t. He’s faced it squarely, and he deserves praise for that.

History will record that in February 2010, full equality for gays and lesbians came another step closer to reality.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe for just $14.97 a year, just click here.