ORDER BY Problem With CONVERT

Hi,
I just realized that when I started using the CONVERT function on my dates in my SELECT statement and try to ORDER BY one of the date fields that I convert, the order isn't actually correct. Here's the statement:

$query = "SELECT id, BroSisFirstName, BroSisLastName, TerrNumber, IsCheckedOut, IsLPCheckedOut, BroSisFirstNameLP, BroSisLastNameLP, CONVERT(char(10),CONVERT(datetime, CAST(checkedOutDate as varchar(12))),101) AS checkedOutDate, CONVERT(char(10),CONVERT(datetime, CAST(returnedDate as varchar(12))),101) AS returnedDate, CONVERT(char(10),CONVERT(datetime, CAST(lpcheckedOutDate as varchar(12))),101) AS lpcheckedOutDate, CONVERT(char(10),CONVERT(datetime, CAST(lpReturnedDate as varchar(12))),101) AS lpReturnedDate FROM Checkouts WHERE IsClosed < 1 ORDER BY checkedOutDate";

It's almost as if it's treating the date as a string. Does anybody know why, and how I can correct the issue? I need to use the CONVERT function because I don't want the whole 00:00:00 returned with each date. And I say it's the CONVERT function because if I take off the CONVERT on one of the fields such as checkedOutDate and try to sort by it, it sorts correctly.