Let’s not kid ourselves. More people agree with Gen. Peter Pace’s recent remarks about gays and lesbians in the military than we’d like to admit.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Chicago Tribune editorial board he considers homosexuality immoral and he thinks letting gays serve in the armed forces condones immorality. He supports the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that allows gays to serve but requires them to keep quiet about their sexual orientation.

When the general’s comments provoked criticism, though, he said he should have kept his personal feelings to himself and limited his comments to his support of the existing arrangement.

But why hold back? The fact is, the personal fears, confusion and narrow-mindedness embodied in Pace’s intemperate words are inseparable from the policy. If those who embrace “don’t ask, don’t tell” had their way, the U.S. military would ban gays; the mandatory dishonesty now being enforced is just a compromise with a reality they can’t eradicate.

Gays and lesbians do wear the uniform – some 60,000 of them according to a UCLA study. But those numbers are shrinking as “don’t ask, don’t tell” revokes many patriotic Americans’ right to serve their country honorably.

Americans like retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Fidelis Alva, the first U.S. service member wounded in the Iraq conflict. It will be four years on Tuesday since a land mine cost Alva a leg. President Bush personally awarded him the Purple Heart. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld paid a personal visit.

Last month, however, the ex-Marine told Congress he is gay, one of those people Pace considers a threat to military integrity. Fortunately, notable voices are showing more rationality.

“I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the chairman’s view that homosexuality is immoral.” So says Sen. John Warner about Pace’s remarks. Warner, a Virginia Republican, is the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a one-time undersecretary of the Navy.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican who voted for “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, wrote in the Washington Post this week that many things have changed since then. His opinion would be one.

“My God, we’d better start talking sense before it is too late. We need every able-bodied, smart patriot to help us win this war,” Simpson wrote, influenced heavily by the fact that several dozen gay people with desperately needed Arabic language skills were kicked out of the service.

Simpson’s and Warner’s views buttress the plain-spoken wisdom uttered years ago by the late Sen. Barry Goldwater: “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”

And these guys are conservatives.

With their own distinguished military backgrounds, Goldwater of the Air Force, Warner of the Marines and Simpson of the Army have the credibility to defuse the oft-cited paranoia that an integrated military will undermine troop morale.

Pace, in contrast, is inciting it.