Several years ago Schlessinger had a reputation for being tolerant of homosexuality, but she’s since embraced Orthodox Judaism and moved farther to the sociocultural right. She’s trashed feminists (“They nauseate and sicken me”) and mixed (“interfaithless”) marriages. In a November broadcast, she savaged–by name–a Connecticut eighth grader for an award-winning essay in favor of free speech on the Internet: “If she was my daughter, I’d probably put her up for adoption… When she makes her marriage vows and her husband has sex with everybody else, let’s see if she thinks that this philosophy works.” She also suggested the girl be “sacrificed,” Inca style.
Schlessinger decries homosexuality on Biblical grounds: in Genesis, God “didn’t get Adam another guy.” She calls gays “deviants,” prevented by “a biological error” from relating “normally” to the opposite sex; she supports “reparative therapy,” the dubious “cure” for homosexuality. Same-sex parenting is “despicable.” She makes the absurd claim that “a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys,” and warns of a militant gay conspiracy: “You people have to get off your duffs, or you’re going to lose your country to fascism.”
Well, she’s sure gotten gays off their duffs. Last week the brand-new “StopDr.Laura.com” Web site got more than 3 million hits, and this week activists plan to picket Paramount Studios in L.A. to protest her upcoming syndicated TV show, scheduled for September. Paramount has met with GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), but still issued a stirring defense of free speech–“We respect and believe in Dr. Laura’s right to have and express her own point of view”–just as they would for anyone to whom they’d paid $3 million. Still, the pressure’s clearly been building. The then presidential candidate Bill Bradley’s denunciation (her comments made him “sick to my stomach”) didn’t rock Paramount’s world, but when producers at the hit show “Frasier” protested against their new colleague, something had to be done.
Last week Schlessinger issued a statement denying she meant to “contribute… to an atmosphere of hate or intolerance” and regretting that “words that I have used in a clinical context have been perceived as judgment. They were not meant to… encourage others to disparage homosexuals… We are all made in G-d’s image, and therefore, we should treat one another with love and kindness…” The unmollified StopDrLaura.com Web site issued a response saying their demonstration was still on. Stay tuned.
