In Ted Kennedy's new memoir, the Senator describes his first meeting with Bill Clinton in the White House. The new president had stumbled into a firestorm about gays in the military and had invited the Democratic members of the Armed Services Committee for a consultation. All of the senators went around the room giving their opinions, an unburdening that lasted a whopping two hours, long enough to cost Kennedy a seat at the ballet that night.

Kennedy spoke in favor of lifting the ban, while Robert Byrd, going last, spoke against. Finally, the president spoke up. Here is Kennedy's telling:

President Clinton stood up. His response was short and sweet. 'Well,' he said. 'Moses went up to the mountain, and he came back with the tablets and there were ten commandments on those tablets. I've read those commandments. I know what they say, just like I know you do. And nowhere in those ten commandments will you find anything about homosexuality. Thank y'all for coming.' He ended the meeting and walked out of the room."

Clinton was technically correct. The Ten Commandments do not mention homosexuality. But the Five Books of Moses do, in ways that have plagued homosexuals for centuries. Leviticus 18:22 says, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman." Leviticus 20:13 says this "abomination" is punishable by death. Conservative Jews and Christians have long cited these two verses in their condemnation of homosexuality, though more liberal-minded believers have claimed these verses occur in the context of idol-worship or other passages that render them irrelevant to current conventions. In any event, many offenses for which the Bible calls for the death penalty have not been punished in that way for millennia, if ever.

Clinton's quoting Moses to support softening the ban on gays in the military recalls other uses of the Hebrew prophet to promote civil rights - and rights in general. The pilgrims likened their journey across the Atlantic to "Moses and the Israelites when they went out of Egypt." George Washington attributed the Revolution to the "same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors." Abolitionists made "Go Down, Moses" their national anthem and, of course, Martin Luther King compared the civil rights movement to the Exodus and likened himself to Moses the night before he died.

"I've been to the mountaintop," he declared. "And I've looked over. I've seen the promised land. And I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land."

Even the Statue of Liberty, with the rays of light around her head and tablet in her arms, was modeled on Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.

Clinton's situation bears striking parallels to Harry Truman's executive order in 1948 integrating the U.S. military. Noting that polls showed 82 percent of American were against the policy, Truman wrote in his diary: "How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?"

Obama, too, has aligned his presidency with Moses. In 2007, he said King and other civil rights pioneers were the "Moses generation." He was the head of the "Joshua generation" that "finds our way over the river." But Obama might have a trouble quoting the Ten Commandments to support his policy toward gays in the military. Just last month he used them to bolster his health care platform. He claimed his Republican opponents had violated the Ninth Commandment by "bearing false witness" against his ideas.

The Ten Commandments may not endorse gays in the military, but they certainly don't support death panels.