They call themselves liberals.

About a century ago William James delivered a lecture titled, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings." Nowadays somebody ought to give a lecture called, "On a Certain Blindness in Liberals, Especially Liberal Columnists."

Different people find different things to be appalled at in the current controversy about homosexuals in the military. But what appalls me is the abysmal ignorance--or better, the abysmal lack of curiosity-which the cultural Left in general has exhibited regarding the motives of their opponents.

Let Anthony Lewis of the New York Heroes stand for the rest. In his January 29 column, Lewis revealed what motivates the opposition to President Bill Clinton's proposal to lift the ban against gays and lesbians in the military: bigotry. That's it. That's the whole story--the beginning, the middle, and the end. According to the profound and well-researched psychology of Mr. Lewis, bigotry is the opposition's one and only motive.

I don't mean to single out Lewis, who is ordinarily an intelligent commentator on affairs of the day. What he said is what the entire cultural Left has been saying for the last month or so. The fight to admit gays to the military, they assure us, is a fight against bigotry, a fight on all fours with the battle against racial prejudice and discrimination. All opposition is totally irrational, and it deserves to be greeted not with dialogue but with denunciation.

Now this is blindness; the kind of blindness liberals specialize in accusing others of; the kind they say someone is suffering from who doesn't understand, for example, what it is like to live as a homosexual in American society. It is a voluntary blindness, a moral blindness: the refusal to see things from the other fellow's point of view.

Speaking of the other fellow's point of view, I wonder if Lewis and the others have ever actually talked with someone whose opposition to homosexual conduct is religiously based? Have they talked with an Orthodox Jew, an evangelical Protestant, a conservative Catholic?

Have they reflected that these believers belong to religious faiths which have condemned homosexual conduct as immoral for thousands of years? And that these people take their religious convictions seriously?

Do they understand why these people consider homosexuality to be something worse than garden variety immorality? Have they ever taken the trouble to see what traditionalists mean when they call homosexual behavior "unnatural"?

Are they aware that these believers tear social approval of "unnatural" forms of vice will lead to further approval of already flourishing "natural" forms? That they fear giving the okay to homosexuality will open the door wider to lying, stealing, cheating, violence, etc., not to mention other forms of sexual misconduct?

Can they appreciate that these people see the issue of gays in the military as but one item on a much larger gay rights agenda? Or that they believe the ultimate goal of the gay rights agenda is to win full social approval of homosexuality, not mere tolerance?

Can they understand that many religious believers see the gay rights movement as part and parcel of a secularist assault on religion? And that they believe the ultimate goal of secularism is not separation of church and state but the erosion and eventual destruction of religion?

In short, do those on the cultural Left get it?

The answer of course is, no, they don't. And the reason they don't is that it is almost an axiom with them that religious traditionalists are to be held in disdain. So how can they take seriously the opinions of the cultural lower orders? They no more try to understand the point of view of such primitives than the Victorian lady or gentleman tried to enter into the worldview of the servants. (It should be noted that those old-fashioned servants were better behaved than your typical Protestant evangelical of the present day, who doesn't realize that when it comes to important questions of social justice--like gays in the military--he should defer to his betters.) Now I'm not saying that liberals should agree with their conservative opponents. Maybe the conservatives are wrong. Maybe their imaginations are overheated. Maybe they are suffering from a persecution complex. But is it too much to ask that liberals should at least try to understand the religious conservatives?

Time was when liberals prided themselves on their ability to understand the point of view of those they disagreed with. But the liberal temper of mind--the intellectual courtesy that presumes the other fellow has something to say that is worth listening to--is vanishing. That someone like Anthony Lewis should have no clue as to what motivates opposition to gays in the military is, as I said at the outset, appalling.

Think for a moment of the conditions that have to be met before you can legitimately accuse a person--not to mention accusing tens of millions of people--of bigotry. First, the issue at stake has to be a moral and social question of fundamental importance. Second, you have to possess a thorough understanding of the issue involved. Third, you have to be obviously on the right side. Fourth, your opponent has to be equally obviously on the wrong side. Fifth, your opponent's reason for being on the wrong side has to be utterly devoid of rational justification. And sixth, you have to have a thorough understanding of your opponent's point of view.

This is a heavy set of conditions, and plainly they have not been met on the part of liberals who dismiss as mere bigotry all opposition to Clinton's proposal.

If the bigotry charge were nothing more than a cheap shot it would be of little concern. After all, the temptation to take cheap shots in the midst of heated debate is a strong one. But I fear this really is something more. It is a symptom of the narrowness which is overtaking the average contemporary liberal mind, to the point where it becomes almost sectarian. The liberal is turning illiberal.

I don't know what impact gays in the military will have on military discipline. But the debate on this issue has revealed a wretched lack of intellectual discipline on the part of people who pretend to be liberals.