“Dr.” Laura Schlessinger
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Claims to fame: Faux shrink; hate-radio personality; vitriolic gay-basher to the max; hypocrite to the extreme; self-loathing misogynist; adulteress; divorcée; exhibitionist; bad daughter; generally nasty piece of work
Moral apex: Spending an inordinate amount of her radio talk show painting the gay and lesbian community as deviant, disordered pedophiles who should never be allowed to marry, adopt children, or be in the company of children. Which, of course, she did solely “out of compassion and religious love.”
“Sex,” Schlessinger remarked in 1998, “within the context of a covenant between a man and a woman is the only scripturally acceptable sexuality” — a sentiment she has repeated, ad nauseam throughout her career.
Punch line: This one-time darling of the “family values” hate-radio set:
• Posed for nude pictures, then, after getting
Typically, Schlessinger made herself out to be the victim: “I’ve undergone profound changes over the course of my life from atheist to observant Jew,” she whined on her radio show. “I am mystified as to why this 80-year-old man would do such a morally reprehensible thing.”
“Dr. Laura has given several different stories concerning these pictures,” notes Bartcop. “First, she said they were fakes, and the pictures were NOT of her. She would never do anything like spread her legs for a camera. Then, she went to court and tried to get the judge to order the website with the pictures to take the pictures down because she owned them. Funny, Dr. Laura would own tacky, tacky pictures of some woman with her legs spread like a whore?”
• Is vehemently anti-contraception — yet had her own tubes tied. (She got them untied when she decided she wanted a kid.) What’s more, around 2000 or so, she contributed $5,000 to CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), “which pays drug addicts to get sterilized or to use long-term birth control.”
• Neglected her own mother. In a big way. To the point that Little Laura hadn’t spoken to Yolanda Schlessinger for more than ten years at the time of the woman’s death in 2002. To the point that she didn’t even know the 77-year-old woman had died — because Yolanda’s body lay rotting in her Beverly Hills apartment for months before somebody (not Laura) discovered it. (The body was so badly decomposed, police initially suspected homicide.) To the point that Dr. Feelbad let the old lady’s corpse lie around the Los Angeles morgue for ten days before claiming it.
“Honor thy father and mother,” Daughter Dearest once lectured her listeners. “Even bad parents deserve to be honored if only at a minimal level.”
“Although Schlessinger admonishes her callers to mend family rifts,” Leslie Bennetts wrote in Vanity Fair in 1998, “she hasn’t seen her own mother in 14 years. The rupture amazed her friends, who say that Laura’s mother was devoted to her.” Said Shelly Herman, one of Schlessinger’s few friends: “Laura is a very needy person, and her mother was instrumental in helping her function on a daily basis. Her mother lived for Laura and would have done anything for her.”
• Was so estranged from her sister that “She always told me she was an only child,” said Herman. Schlessinger hadn’t seen younger sister Cyndi since the 1970s, and caught up with her again in 2003. (According to Bill Ballance, the problem was Schlessinger’s jealousy over Cyndi’s looks.)
• Started an affair with her current husband, Lew Bishop, a father of three who was still married to somebody else… and then forced him to convert to Judaism. (Schlessinger has a visceral loathing of interfaith marriages — which no doubt has something to do with the marriage of her Jewish father and Catholic mother.)
• Is insanely opposed to premarital sex, yet lived with Bishop for nine years before they married. (Women who have sex outside marriage, proclaimeth Ayatollah Laura, are “presenting themselves virtually as unpaid whores.”)
• Says mothers should never work outside the home, but should be full-time mothers… yet went back to work when her own son was about five or six.
• Spent five years crediting her sound moral clarity to her conversion to Orthodox Judaism — and then, in 2003, renounced Judaism altogether, because other Jews didn’t seem as susceptible to her brand of crap as Christians did. On-air, she whined: “By and large the faxes from Christians have been very loving, very supportive. From my own religion, I have either gotten nothing, which is 99% of it, or two of the nastiest letters I have gotten in a long time. I guess that’s my point — I don’t get much back. Not much warmth coming back.”
Small wonder. “Dr. Laura always equated her morals and ethics with Jewish morals and ethics,” said Kosher Sex author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. “That placed the American Jewish community in a real fix; on the one hand, she made Judaism very popular, on the other, she made it vilified and hated by many people.”
“Dr. Laura’s repudiation of her Judaism ranks as one of the shallowest renunciations of personal faith in all human history,” the Rabbi wrote. “It is surely unworthy of America’s self-styled moral advocate.”
“It’s one of the saddest things in my life that I don’t have a relationship with God right now,” Schlessinger told Joe Scarborough at the end of 2005. “I really immersed myself in Judaism to the point that I had an Orthodox conversion, and let me tell you, when I do anything, you know me well enough to know, it’s 120 percent. I had great hats, I mean.”
(Which begs the question: If she no longer has a relationship with God, on what basis does she have any claim to “moral authority”?)
In any case, Frau Blucher Schlessinger took it upon herself to become the Radical Right’s attack dog, obsessing regularly (and devoting entire radio shows to) a single target of bloodlust: gay and lesbian people.
Schlessinger claims she was a great friend to gay folks (she’s a member of the I’m Not a Homophobe / Some of My Best Friends Are Gay Club), and homos didn’t start to really irritate her until after the gay community hit back against her empty and dangerous lies about them.
“Laura … told me,” wrote Larry Metzler, Schlessinger’s former longtime (and gay) chief engineer in The Advocate, “that she had taught human sexuality courses at the University of Southern California and that homosexuality was just another aspect of human behavior. There was no talk of ‘biological mistakes’ or ‘deviancy’ at that time. As a matter of fact, she believed strongly that everyone had a right to be in a loving relationship.”
Obviously, her conversion to Orthodox Judaism had a lot to do with her sea change. “When she became religious, she subscribed to the tenets of traditional Judaism, and that says that homosexuality is beyond the pale of acceptable behavior,” her spokesperson, Keven Bellows, told Salon.com.
Yet in all our years studying the tenets of all world religions, we haven’t been able to find the Even Ha’ezer directive that says, “Thou shalt lie thy ass off in order to relegate thy critics to the cubbyhole of a subhuman species.”
Spaketh the Whore of Babylon on her August 12, 1999, show: “I have always been in the position of compassion to people who have to deal with not being able to be heterosexual and get married and have families and have that heritage and lifestyle. I’ve always been compassionate about that. Where I turned is where the compassion and the basic civil rights turned into destruction of the family, the manipulation of children to accept deviancy as diversity. That’s where I turned — that’s where the worm turned.”
A year later, her reason for going anti-gay morphed from religious epiphany and compassion into a self-pity party because those bad old gays were so meeeeean to her: “Now, where I moved over to the other side, is by the gay activist groups being described as ‘hate.’ And I’m real tired of that, because it’s a lie — it’s a damned lie, and they know it. But, they have managed to convince the non-activist gay civilians, that I come from a position of hate.” Still, she added just moments later: “So, when you hear people say about me that I made this transition from supporting same-sex relationships to not because of hate, it is a lie. And I am on record; I am on tape. I did it out of compassion and religious love.”
In any case, Schlessinger fired the first shot heard ’round the world, in her May 25, 1997, syndica
ted newspaper column:
I see homosexuality as a biological faux pas — that is, an error in proper brain development.
It’s not that the gay community had never heard this kind of garbage before; what drove gay people nuts was that Schlessinger enjoyed the advantage of a challenge-proof, one-way forum and wide influence to dehumanize — and demonize — non-heterosexuals.
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And she was using junk science to do it. Repeatedly, Schlessinger quoted many of the outrageous lies invented by the rabidly anti-gay — and thoroughly discredited — Paul Cameron, whose long-debunked “facts” about gay people are a mainstay of Radical Right groups that want to legislate (and in some cases, literally exterminate) gay men and lesbians out of existence.
As outrageous as the “biological faux pas” statement was, Schlessinger might have weathered the storm of controversy if the remark had been isolated, and if she had apologized, publicly and sincerely, to the LGBT community, and gone back to her usual schtick of browbeating listeners unwise (or masochistic) enough to ask her for advice.
But that remark was just the beginning. And it clued gay people in to the fact that the wildly popular “tough love” darling of right-wing media was not only not a friend to the gay community, but a potentially very dangerous enemy.
GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Executive Director Joan M. Garry requested — and got — a meeting with Schlessinger, and Schlessinger even agreed to participate in a GLAAD “virtual town hall” meeting, but pulled out at the last moment. That’s when, notes GLAAD, she “publicly change[d] her position on homosexuality, saying her past views on acceptance were wrong and that homosexuality is destructive.”
After that, Schlessinger — perhaps emboldened by the knowledge that her words were eating at the gay community she so disdained — only ramped up the rhetoric. On her December 8, 1998, radio show, she made the statement no one would ever forget:
I’m sorry, hear it one more time perfectly clearly: if you’re gay or a lesbian, it’s a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex. The fact that you are intelligent, creative and valuable is all true. The error is in your inability to relate sexually, intimately, in a loving way to a member of the opposite sex. It is a biological error.
In short order, GLAAD began monitoring, recording, and transcribing her broadcasts in the first steps toward countering the Bad Doctor’s baseless attacks. Garry met with Schlessinger again in early 1999 — which again, resulted only in fueling Schlessinger’s anti-gay fire.
It was around this time that Schlessinger became fixated on the “gays are pedophiles” myth, and the dangerous and deceptive idea that homosexuality was a disease that could be “cured.”
On “reparative therapy”:
Probably the most important and the most evil toward homosexuals themselves is the elimination of the ability of homosexuals who wish to change to find a therapist who’ll do it without being condemned as unethical. And gays do change; lesbians do change. Homosexuals do change if they so desire, a reasonable percentage of them…I would like homosexuals to have the ability to get reparative therapy so they could live quote “normal” lives and have the benefits of a heterosexual relationship.
— August 12, 1999
It is quite possible to believe that a sexual behavior is deviant and disordered and not wish to have any harm come to that person; moreover, to have spiritual and psychiatric help come to that person. But the radical activists do not allow that; they just jump on the bigotry word. And that is so offensive.
— September 8, 1999
It [homosexuality] is abnormal. That doesn’t mean somebody who is homosexual — male or female — should be ostracized or hurt. On the contrary, they should be supported and helped. However, the homosexual activists and the liberal agenda actually functions now, in my opinion, to prevent yearning homosexuals — yearning for quote “the normal sexual orientation” — it functions against them. I think that’s cruel. … I think prohibiting a homosexual who wishes to work on repairing what is an abnormal sexual orientation… To forbid this with the pressure that has come to bear … to me is not moral. To me, it is an assault on those homosexuals, who wish to attempt to change and normalize their sexuality. …
I should tell you that the religion-based efforts that try to help homosexuals change their sexual orientation are forbidden in the schools because of the so-called division of church and state. Isn’t this clever? …
So we can’t help gays and lesbians who wish to quote “go straight.” We can’t help them anymore. And you know who made that so? The gay and lesbian activist groups. To me, that’s hateful. …
— November 23, 1999
“When it came to so-called reparative therapy,” Larry Metzler wrote in 2000, “I was helping Laura with an article for her newsletter that exposed this ‘cure for homosexuality’ as the nonsense that it is. We hadn’t finished the article, though, by the time her show was purchased by Premiere Radio Networks and I was let go…”
On gay and lesbian parenting:
Years ago, I was probably the only talk-show host on air who would take calls from homosexuals — lesbians and gays who just wanted to discuss a given issue. Boy, did I get grief for that. Because I was very much opposed to the hostility towards homosexuals, I pooh-poohed the warnings. I regret today that I didn’t pay more attention to the warnings. We now have laws allowing homosexual couples to adopt kids from birth as though having a mom and a dad were not relevant. …
— August 13, 1998
Is there not the most voluminous amount of material which indicates that fatherless homes hurt children? I don’t give a damn about what these two women want! It hurts children! Not even that, how can any adoption agency give twins to two lesbians who don’t even want to raise the kids? Who give them a nanny, for God’s sake! What is the matter with you, when there are heterosexual, two parent, married, committed couples who want to stay home and raise the children? Talk about ideology having power over the reality!
The psychological literature for decades and decades has amassed voluminous information that says these kids will be damaged because there’s no father in the home. Raising a little boy with two lesbian mothers and a nanny!
— June 22, 1999
On the gays-as-pedophiles myth:
No, not every homosexual is a pedophile. Obviously not. But it is a greater percentage, much greater.
— June 10, 1999
Schlessinger’s spokesperson, Keven Bellows, told Salon.com that “her boss’s comments on pedophilia have been taken out of context. ‘Of course the vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual, she knows that,’ Bellows says. Then she repeats the charge.
“‘All she said was that gay men are more likely to be pedophiles, and I think that’s true,’ she says. …
“‘Most of what we know about the gay population,’ Bellows explains, ‘is from the audience, a number of whom are gay.’”
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Which itself was a lie. Despite the occasional letter from some self-loathing, self-proclaimed gay man claiming that gay men regularly go on vacation just to have sex with little boys in the Third World countries (see sidebar), the truth is that “Dr.” Laura was getting all of her facts from the diseased mind of Paul Cameron, by way of anti-gay hate groups (what else can you call a group organized for the sole purpose of harming gay people but a “hate group”?), among them the Family Research Council, which she endorsed on her radio show on more than one occasion.
“Now,” roared Schlessinger on her June 22, 1999, program, “from the Family Research Council, and I’m getting a hold of some of the literature, they write that even the social science studies cited by gay activists reveal that children raised in homosexual households are four times as likely to identify as homosexual or to experiment with homosexual behavior. …
“To whom does it matter that more of these kids will become gay? …
“This is a travesty. That these two women could adopt newborns, intentionally depriving them of fathers, is despicable and should be unlawful.”
“I don’t recommend many organizations,” Schlessinger said of the FRC on her August 24, 1999, show, “certainly not as highly as I recommend them — for factual information and intelligent points of view and intelligent arguments. With, I should add, absolutely no name-calling. How is that possible? That’s because they have intelligent things to say — and they’re not mean.”
That “factual information” from the FRC includes such eye-opening tidbits culled from Cameron’s voluminous collection of lies, e.g. (excerpted from the Matthew Shepard Online Resources site):
• “…one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”• “There is a strong undercurrent of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. Homosexual activists want to promote the flouting of traditional sexual prohibitions at the earliest possible age….they want to encourage a promiscuous society – and the best place to start is with a young and credulous captive audience in the public schools.”
• “One [gay] activist calls for the outlawing of churches that disapprove of homosexual conduct. Another carefully outlines an advertising campaign that equates Christian clergy with Nazis and Klansmen. …”
• “[H]atred for men … is very typical of a lesbian experience.”
• “A study of more than 6,400 obituaries in homosexual publications reveals that homosexuals typically have far shorter life spans than the general population.” [According to Cameron, the average life expectancy for gay men in the United States is 43, and for lesbians 45. — Ed.]
• “Monogamy is not the norm for the average homosexual.”
• “Homosexuals are a security risk.”
• “Homosexual activists have made such strides in gaining acceptance that now they feel the final frontier is the children. That’s been the goal all along: get the next generation.”
• “Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
• “[Gays] constitute about a third of child molesters.”
• “It is estimated that approximately 80% of pedophilic victims are boys who have been molested by adult males.”
And that’s not even the worst of it.
In the meantime, Paramount Domestic Television unwisely signed Schlessinger to do her own television talk show. It was bad enough that Schlessinger was such a major force in the talk-radio market (at one time syndicated to more stations than Rush Limbaugh), but now she was going to beam her insidious hate directly into living rooms across North America.
That pushed the gay community over the edge — which in turn finally lit a fire under GLAAD, long seen as being too “soft” on Schlessinger.
On his own radio show, Michelangelo Signorile scolded GLAAD executive director Joan M. Garry: “You’ve not blasted Paramount and scared them in the way other minority groups have scared them from putting on defamatory shows. You’ve not demanded this show not be aired. It all seems to deny GLAAD its activist past.”
“After three months of intensified attacks by Schlessinger on the gay community,” recalls GLAAD, and after the announcement of Schlessinger’s upcoming TV show, “GLAAD’s ‘GLAADAlert Special: Tell Dr. Laura the Truth,’ [asked] community members to write Schlessinger, respectfully disagreeing with her positions on gay issues, and educating her by sharing their life stories. Nearly 1,000 letters copied to GLAAD are received within 72 hours of the Alert. As part of a massive media outreach initiative, GLAAD [began] distributing media kits containing audio tape recordings and full transcripts of Schlessinger’s radio monologues. Dozens of LGBT media outlets [covered] the story during the following months. GLAAD [wrote] Premiere Radio Networks (Schlessinger’s radio syndicator), requesting a meeting to discuss Schlessinger’s increasingly defamatory rhetoric, increasing endorsement and advocacy of Family Research Council positions, and lack of respectful acknowledgment of opposing views. GLAAD [wrote] Paramount Domestic Television, requesting a meeting to discuss its concerns with Schlessinger’s anti-gay advocacy as it transfers to television.”
GLAAD’s initial efforts had little impact — and, predictably, sent Schlessinger into attack mode.
“[GLAAD] reminds me of Stalinistic Russia,” spat Schlessinger on October 21, 1999. “You will agree with us or we will try to silence you. And they have a Pavlovian knee-jerk reaction; they hear anything they don’t like, and they start fulminating, get mean, and translate ANY opposition or disagreement as hate mongering.” She ended that show with the epithet, “Totalitarian government wannabe.”
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“[GLAAD's] work regarding Laura Schlessinger is a perfect case study for the free exchange of ideas in America,” Joan M. Garry would later observe during a PBS Online NewsHour forum. “The First Amendment protects Schlessinger’s right to express her opinions free from government censorship, just as it protects our right to expose her prejudicial remarks and call for others to distance themselves from her programming. However, free speech (the right of every American) and corporate-sponsored speech in the commercial entertainment venue of your choice are two very different things.
“Keep in mind that Schlessinger is not standing in the public square where she must share the microphone, equal time or her ’soapbox’ with others. She does not permit divergent viewpoints on her radio program (in fact, she is the only national talk radio host we know of who does not allow callers to challenge her opinions on the air). Schlessinger still has the right to say what’s on her mind, but her monologues no longer are going unchallenged. We don’t believe our forefathers penned the First Amendment to guarantee anyone his or her own talk show on public airwaves.
“GLAAD’s work regarding ‘Dr. Laura,’” Garry concluded, “has created the kind of serious public debate that Schlessinger has attempted to silence.”
In the end, all it took was a single mention in the mainstream (read: “straight”) media to garner the kind of attention Schlessinger really deserved. After Brian Lowry brought to light Dr. Nogoodbar’s repeated anti-gay attacks in the Los Angeles Times, the rest of the MSM woke up and began to take interest. Suddenly, Paramount was willing to meet with GLAAD — twice, in fact — but again, little came of the discussion. The TV show was still a go.
GLAAD stopped pulling its punches, and started taking out full-page ads in Hollywood trade magazines, encouraging those in the entertainment industry to make their views about “Dr.” Laura known to Paramount.
At the same time, on March 1, 2000, John Aravosis (later of AmericaBlog fame) and four friends launched StopDrLaura.com “with the goal of forcing Paramount Television to cancel Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s then-upcoming TV show.”
Now, with her feet to the fire, Schlessinger attempted to douse the flames by issuing a backhanded “apology”:
In the recent, very public dialogue concerning my upcoming television show and my religious beliefs about homosexuality, many things have been said. Some are true. Many, unfortunately, are not. But one inviolate truth is that I never intend to hurt anyone or contribute in any way to an atmosphere of hate or intolerance.Regrettably, some of the words I’ve used have hurt some people, and I am sorry for that. Words that I have used in a clinical context have been perceived as judgement. They were not meant to characterize homosexual individuals or encourage others to disparage homosexuals.
I regularly remind my listeners that we are all made in G-d’s image and, therefore, we should treat one another with love and kindness, irrespective of one’s faith.
I will continue to discuss on radio and television a variety of pressing moral and ethical issues facing our society; I remain committed to doing this in an environment free from hate or intolerance and with a deep respect for freedom of speech. I can only hope others will share this commitment.
GLAAD responded with its own statement:
As Laura Schlessinger herself might say, an apology without a fundamental change in behavior is meaningless. If Schlessinger is sincere in her apology to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, then it must be accompanied by a change in her actions. GLAAD will continue to hold Schlessinger accountable for her public statement. …GLAAD also recognizes that the damage done by Schlessinger’s past comments cannot be undone by a single qualified apology. There is a difference between opposing viewpoints and a defamatory expression of those views which encourages prejudice and discrimination. The former is crucial to an open exchange of ideas. The latter is unacceptable. Schlessinger has said, “Words have the power to hurt or heal, depending on how we use them.” It is now incumbent upon Schlessinger to use her words to heal; this will be the test of her promise. …
Did she keep that promise? Of course not. It took only a few days for Schlessinger to backpeddle, and go right back to her old tactics.
“What turned GLAAD from this patient approach,” reported PlanetOut, “…was Schlessinger’s apparent recantation of her March 10 ‘clarification,’ which many described as an apology. A column by conservative Don Feder in the March 15 ‘Boston Herald’ said, ‘On Friday, Schlessinger issued a statement regretting “words I’ve used” that have “hurt some people.” This is a clarification, she told me, not an apology. She will continue to recommend reparative therapy (for homosexuals who want to change), to oppose same-sex marriage and adoption, and champion Judeo-Christian sexual ethics.’
“At that point, GLAAD executive director Joan Garry issued a statement that, ‘This disavowal of her own words demonstrates that Schlessinger cannot be held accountable for what she says publicly. Because she has breached the integrity of her own statement, GLAAD now has no assurance that Schlessinger will not publicly defame lesbians and gay men in her radio or upcoming television broadcasts. GLAAD now calls upon Paramount to… [abandon] its plans to produce and distribute any program featuring Laura Schlessinger.’”
GLAAD held rallies, and helped local gay and lesbian groups petition and meet with managers of network affiliates slated to air Schlessinger’s TV show. And, between GLAAD’s efforts and StopDrLaura.com, a concentrated effort to reach Schlessinger’s scheduled sponsors began.
One positive event came and went with little fanfare in the U.S.: Our neighbors to the north decided that Schlessinger’s anti-gay rants violated Canada’s human rights provisions. While the final decision came in May, 2000, this is what the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) had to say in February:
The Councils … conclude that those of her comments characterizing the sexuality of gays and lesbians as “abnormal”, “aberrant”, “deviant”, “disordered”, “dysfunctional”, “an error” or the like and her generalized statements that paedophilia has to do with being gay and is more common among members of the gay community than the heterosexual community, are in violation of the human rights provision of the CAB Code of Ethics (Clause 2) and also constitute an unfair or improper expression of opinion or comment pursuant to Clause 6 of that same Code.
The first big break for the protesters came less than a week after the CBSC decision: Procter & Gamble withdrew from sponsoring Schlessinger’s show, and gave StopDrLaura.com the green light to break the news publicly.
After that, the dominoes (and they were big dominoes) fell fast: Quick to follow P&G’s lead and yank sponsorship were Xerox, Toy ‘R’ Us, Sears Roebuck, Kraft Foods, AT&T; General Foods; Geico Insurance; EchoStar Communications (DISH Network), Gateway Computers, Saab, SkyTel, Priceline.com (one of “Dr.” Laura’s oldest sponsors), and United Airlines (which dropped Schlessinger’s ads from its in-flight magazine).
Schlessinger responded by going on-air and begging her audience to support her remaining sponsors, and tried to run damage control by issuing even more half-assed apologies blaming the gay mafia; e.g.: “I regret that my words were taken out of context, distorted and lied about so people were hurt from the lies. But that’s not my action. Any time I was on the air, I had context, clarity and compassion.” (Time magazine, July 3, 2000)
Still, Paramount refused to cancel production of Schlessinger’s TV show. “Here’s the grand irony of Paramount’s predicament,” Philip Van Munching wrote in Brandweek. “The people who might normally worry about the coarsening effect of remarkably mean-spirited programming (read: the religious right) are exactly the folks who embrace homophobic, self-righteous twaddle. The people who might normally be counted on to stand up for free expression at all costs (read: gay activists) are exactly the folks who would deny her a national TV forum. Paramount’s corporate head must be spinning, trying to figure out who its allies are on this one.”
And so Dr. Laura debuted (quite appropriately, we think) on September 11, 2000. But, unlike the other disaster that would befall America exactly one year later, the premiere of “Dr. Laura” came in with a whimper instead of a bang.
Professional critics and home viewers alike all said the same thing: The show was boring. Whatever appeal Schlessinger had on radio, it did not translate to the small screen.
Typical (and among the most entertaining) are these reviews from Jump the Shark (where an overwhelming majority of those polled say the show jumped the shark on day one):
• I’ll admit it, I don’t agree with most of what Dr. Laura has to say but I often listen to her radio show just for its entertainment value. When I found out she was doing a one hour TV show, I was intrigued. Well, I tuned in for ONE DAY and was bored to death. Her nagging, confrontational attitude may be interesting in one-minute snippets on the radio, but she does not translate well to TV. Plus, she has a face for radio, if you know what I mean — the woman is scary! I’ve heard the show has already been cancelled, to which I say, GOOD RIDDANCE.• Let’s see…here is a obviously B.S., strict, control freak, domineering mommy dearest parent from hell, who not only feels the need to control the lives of her own unfortunate children but everybody else on the planet foolish enough to seek her advice… LET’S GIVE HER A SHOW! People (including herself) thought her blatant homophobia would do her in, but it turned out she was not only an asshole, but not very interesting either!
• I tuned in to that show thinking there would be lots of yelling and chair throwing. After 5 minutes I was so bored I gave up on Dr. Laura and decided to read Ancient Greek plays — I swear, they were more interesting.
• Actually, I myself do agree with a good part of what she says (though I do find her unnecessarily antagonistic and caustic at times) so I taped her premiere show to watch with anticipation — only to find it supremely dull and repetitive. … I couldn’t help but be uncomfortable watching her as she appeared to be far more brittle, thin-skinned, defensive and sad in a way I had not perceived from merely listening to her radio show.
• She has the face of that mean old sixth grade school teacher that everyone hated. Her face screams “tight old bitch”. You can see she is bitter woman who is unhappy with her life.
• Who got drunk one day and decided to give this right-wing B-word a talk show?
• …I was most disturbed by the shoddy editing used to stack the debates in the hostess’s favor. Bill Maher is very rude to his conservative guests and has made some inflammatory comments as well, but he doesn’t edit out half of their rebuttals in order to make himself look good. Perhaps that’s why Politically Incorrect is still on the air after 6 years, it is not as one sided. Later they tried to go with a more Oprah-esque approach.
• Dr. Laura’s show was all about “These are the correct opinions to have. End of story.” How boring! Plus, to be completely superficial, she’s a dog with a turkey’s neck.
• There’s only one good thing to say about Sept 11 [2001], it got Dr. Laura’s show booted off the morning slot on local radio and replaced by something more relevant.
• The show tanked because it was a total bore.
By September 28th — just two and a half weeks after its debut — Paramount temporarily yanked Dr. Laura for a “retooling.” In the meantime, the show lost another major sponsor, Pillsbury, and a handful of Canadian TV affiliates dumped the program from their lineups.
By October, Schlessinger was in full damage-control overdrive, running a full-page ad in Variety in an attempt to shift the blame for her own “poorly chosen words” back onto her critics for “distorting” them. It didn’t help; within a week, the next big advertiser to yank sponsorship was Time-Life (and those people will advertise their “Greatest Disco Polka Hits” compilations anywhere).
By November, twelve of the largest CBS markets in the U.S. had moved the show from its desirable daytime slot to the no-man’s-land of 2:00 a.m. filler. Additional affiliates began dumping the show entirely.
By now, Schlessinger was desperate. She used her November 17th radio show in a pathetic bid for new advertisers, sounding like a leprotic Girl Scout who can’t understand why no one will buy the cookies she’s just coughed all over:
Oh yeah, one other thing I wanted to tell you: if you own any kind of a business, you have things or services or what-have-you, and you would like to be a sponsor of my radio show and/or television show — locally or nationally, depending upon how successful you’ve been and wanna get! — all you have to do is fax me here. I can pass it to the right people.There’s just one thing I have to remind you of: there’s something very usual — unusual — about my radio show and TV show, and that is that they basically both support and promote traditional values. This makes it very dangerous, because there are other forces that bear against traditional values. You know, just want the same anybody-can-do-anything-they-want trash. So to sponsor a program like mine means you have to be able to — like in this book — tolerate battering from the forces that be who do not want to have the attitude of traditional values spoken in this country — or Canada.
So if you’d like to become an advertiser and a sponsor of the Dr. Laura radio and/or TV show — now remember, on radio, I have got 20 million and growing listeners, most of whom are very supportive of traditional family values. They will love to support you. So fax me … and I have the miraculous power to pass it on to the powers that be in radio and/or television local and/or national. Or both, or all. But beware, the bad guys are going to beat on you; you have to have a spine to stand with me.
After another six-week “retooling” hiatus that ended in March, 2001, Dr. Laura resumed taping. Schlessinger’s return to the airwaves was hardly triumphant; averaging a me
re .08 to .09 ratings share, the show lasted just one more week before Paramount finally, and mercifully, pulled the plug.
GLAAD applauded the cancellation as “a powerful victory against defamation and anti-gay intolerance.” In a way, it was; at least Schlessinger’s bile wouldn’t slime its way through TV tubes any longer — and she did lose the financial support of many important advertisers from her radio show.
In the end, however, the TV cancellation was all about ratings. Dr. Laura just wasn’t a moneymaker for Paramount, or its sponsors.
So, while we’d like to think that “Dr.” Laura was right about one thing — that she was brought down by a well-organized effort by the victims of her putrid lies — the truth is that if her TV show had been entertaining, had kept a substantial viewership, and had made lots of money for her backers, it would still be on the air today.
That doesn’t diminish the value of GLAAD’s efforts (or those of John Aravosis, who never gets the credit he deserves for his part in Schlessinger’s downfall). “We wanted to bring her defamatory characterizations of our lives to the attention of the American public,” wrote GLAAD’s Sean Lund in The Advocate, and that’s exactly what they did.
But we don’t think for a moment that every advertiser that pulled out of sponsoring Schlessinger’s radio or TV shows did so out of a moral obligation to fairness and against bigotry.
After all, Rush Limbaugh is still on the air, isn’t he?
Fun fact #1: The “Dr.” title and a dollar-fifty will get you on the subway. Noted GLAAD in 2000: “Schlessinger’s Ph.D. is in physiology; this has as much relevance to her media persona as would an advanced degree in geology. Also, her counseling credentials are currently inactive. Yet because she has an advice show and calls herself ‘Dr. Laura,’ many members of her audience believe that she can speak credibly about issues of sexual orientation, lesbian and gay psychology, and mental health issues related to the LGBT community.”
Fun fact #2: While still embracing Judaism, the hopeful “Queen of the Jews” (that’s how Radical Right whackjob Michael Medved — who is a friend of the Deviant Diva — once described Schlessinger) was out to lunch on matters of sexuality and marriage as regarded by Orthodox law. F’rinstance:
• “In principle,” the Jewish Virtual Library tells us, in Orthodox Judaism, “birth control is permitted, so long as the couple is committed to eventually fulfilling the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply (which, at a minimum, consists of having two children, one of each gender).”
So, not only is Dr. Holier-Than-Thou wrong about contraception; she blew it when even a reversal of her tubal ligation failed to produce “two children, one of each gender.” (Her son is an only child.)
• Countering Schlessinger’s hysterical anti-choice stance, the JVL also tells us: “Jewish law not only permits, but in some circumstances requires abortion. Where the mother’s life is in jeopardy because of the unborn child, abortion is mandatory.
“An unborn child has the status of ‘potential human life’ until the majority of the body has emerged from the mother. Potential human life is valuable, and may not be terminated casually, but it does not have as much value as a life in existence. The Talmud makes no bones about this: it says quite bluntly that if the fetus threatens the life of the mother, you cut it up within her body and remove it limb by limb if necessary, because its life is not as valuable as hers. But once the greater part of the body has emerged, you cannot take its life to save the mother’s, because you cannot choose between one human life and another.”
• If Schlessinger is basing her unyielding stance against premarital (and extramarital) sex on her (former) orthodoxy, it only proves that she’s as well-versed in the Talmud as most radical Christians are in the Bible — that is, she cherry-picks what suits her own beliefs, as if ordering from a Chinese menu.
Continues the JVL: “Many people are surprised to learn that the Torah does not prohibit premarital sex. I challenge you to find any passage in the Jewish scriptures that forbids a man from having consensual sexual relations with any woman he could legally marry. It’s just not there!
“Nor is there any passage that requires a man to marry a woman after having consensual sexual relations with her. The passage forcing a man to marry the woman deals with rape (the man seizes her). It says nothing about consensual relations. Some say that consensual sexual relations create a common law marriage, which can only be dissolved through divorce, though the law on this point is not clear.
“This is not to suggest that Judaism approves of pre-marital sex or promiscuity. Quite the contrary: traditional Judaism strongly condemns the irresponsibility of sex outside of marriage. It is considered to be improper and immoral, even though it is not technically a sin. In fact, to prevent such relations, Jewish law prohibits an unmarried, unrelated man and woman from being alone long enough to have sexual relations. But these laws come from the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch, not from the Torah.”
• We also wonder if Little Miss Orthodoxy adhered to the strict rule forbidding a man from having sexual intercourse with a niddah, and if she cleansed herself every month in a kosher mikvah — but, frankly, we don’t really want to think about things like that where Schlessinger is concerned.
“I would … remind her of an argument she used to use against the literal interpretation of the Bible,” Larry Metzler wrote in The Advocate. “Such an interpretation, she often pointed out, would go so far as to forbid any man from using a chair she had sat in while menstruating. Isn’t it equally as unrealistic for all people to be constrained by the religious laws adhered to by one sect of Judaism? Would she now have us all stop eating pork?”
Fun fact #3: Schlessinger was a major Clinton-basher, appearing on every TV talk and news show you’ve ever heard of, holding up the Monica Lewinsky affair as the prime example of the deterioration of morality in America.
Fun fact #4: Noted The Advocate in November, 2001: “A Fort Lauderdale, Fla., social services group, the Children’s Home Society, recently refused a donation of 60 duffel bags from Schlessinger’s foundation after learning of its leader’s antigay stance. … Though sorely needing the bags for homeless children leaving its shelter, the CHS ‘does not believe in discrimination,’ says development specialist Shelley Goren — who also notes that while she was refusing the donation, a Dr. Laura operative hung up on her. Enter Terry DeCarlo of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of South Florida, who circulated news of the CHS’s plight via E-mail. Within days DeCarlo’s office was receiving checks — to say nothing of hundreds of duffel bags — donated to the CHS by local gays and lesbians.”
Fun fact #5: In 2004, Schlessinger’s son, Deryk, opened a Hillsdale, Michigan, hookah bar. “She’s happy as long as I don’t go to jail or get kidnapped,” Deryk said of his mother’s reaction.
Random acts of hostility:
Tough luck. You made a decision to hide, to deny, get married, and have children. You made a covenant. Now be man enough to live it!
— To a caller who was married with children,
and thought he might be gay
Quoted in Vanity Fair, 1998
You very kind, reasonable people have been swayed and manipulated into misplacing your compassion with specious arguments of discrimination when I’m here to tell you of course a society should discriminate. Of course it should.
— December 21, 1999
Caller: He has Tourette’s Syndrome.
Schlessinger: And he’s not under control?
Caller: Uhm, nnnaa, off and on. Off and on…
Schlessinger: So you think it is correct to be mad at them, that it’s their wedding, that they’d like to not have a kid who’s physically under, uh, a lack of control and will scream out vul-gar-i-ties in the middle of the wedding and you think it’s wrong to exclude them? Michelle, you smoke something funny?
Caller: No, no, but just being the only one, you know …
Schlessinger: Well gee, if you line up your other relatives with Tourette’s we can keep them home, too, but since this is the only one, and he’s not under control, it is out-rageous to call that, quote, a disability, that should be tolerated at a wedding!!!
F-YOU AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PRAYERS! …
Well, I’m going to come to your party and just scream F-YOU, F-YOU, F-YOU every five seconds and see if you want to invite me back. …
It’s inappropriate behaviour no matter what’s engendering it. And if he’s not under control with medicine or behavioural mechanisms, then he shouldn’t be there. …
She can punish the whole world, because of this unfortunate affliction of her son. She can now punish everybody else who doesn’t want to call this normal. It’s not normal!
— To a caller concerned about the exclusion of her
12-year-old nephew from a family wedding,
because the child has Tourette’s syndrome
Tourette Syndrome – Now What?
May 22, 2001
Let me reiterate, I have great sympathy for children in general, much less any children who suffer from Tourette’s syndrome or any other disability, and for their families as well. Obviously, I meant in no way to disparage them or make light of the difficult problems they face. However, I continue to believe that a bride has the right to have the wedding she wants: no babies, no kids with behavioral problems, what have you. In fact, I believe that it’s fair to say that the mother of the Tourette Syndrome child, the sister, is the unfeeling one for not understanding and respecting the bride’s reasonable concerns.
— Backpeddling on the Tourette’s issue, four days later
ibid.
As usual with “special interest groups,” I am misrepresented – in this case it is with respect to what occured with a caller on my program who asked about whether a family member was in her rights to not want a child with “out of control tourettes” at her wedding ceremony.
I made the point that “having a problem” does not give anyone license to hurt/disrupt etc. another person or persons. I simply pointed out personal responsibility, compassion and respect for the realities of other people. If someone might be disruptive, even to no direct fault of their own, they have a responsibility to others.
That this simple, common sense, compassionate concept got twisted the ugly way it did….is the main problem with our society today. It is all about MY RIGHTS AND FEELINGS and never/rarely about the rights and feelings of OTHERS. Sad, but true. And an attempt to displace frustrations with life’s challenges onto anger and hate of Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a sad commentary.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify – although, through experience, I imagine it won’t change anyone’s mind….many people just seem to want to be angry and hate.
— Email to the editor of Tourettes-Disorder.com
November 10, 2004
Of course a society should discriminate. Of course it should. It should discriminate against certain behaviors. And man-on-man and woman-on-woman sexual activity is a deviant sexual orientation — does not promote any of the values set forth Biblically.
— On The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, June 15, 2000
Do HIV-AIDS prevention agencies turn to homosexuals for advice and guidance about producing materials, because HIV-AIDS does affect homosexuals so disproportionately? It would make sense that they do so. And, if that is true, it may explain why so much of the worldwide prevention education is so morally neutral on the issue and so vague about the disease-lifestyle relationship.
— WorldNetDaily column, May 28, 2002
Actually, I wasn’t going to say anything about the combined Susan Sarandon/Tim Robbins whining that they were losing show-business opportunities because the three-quarters of Americans who backed President Bush (in his efforts simultaneously to protect America and liberate Iraqis) recoiled in disgust from what was perceived as their self-centered, ignorant, knee-jerk, hate-America, ultra-liberal, anti-war/Bush public statements. I wasn’t going to say anything because, frankly, I didn’t want to be seen as saying “Nah, nah, nah.”
Happily, others have said it for me.
— WorldNetDaily column, May 6, 2003
This is a class on morals. What is the point of going to a mosque? I think you ought to stand up against this class and this teacher. This is despicable. You tell [the teacher] you are willing to go to the mosque only if it is one that has done its best to root out terrorists in its midst. …
I am so sick and tired of all the Arab-American groups whining and complaining about some kind of treatment… What culture and what religion were the murderers of 9/11? They murdered us. That’s the culture you want your daughter to learn about?
— To a caller who asked if she should allow her
16-year-old daughter to go on a field trip to a mosque
to learn how Muslims are treated in America
November 17, 2003
From the Ann Coulter School of Self-Loathing Misogyny:
If you tell the truth about domestic violence and your teacher is a member of NOW, you’ll get an F.
— October, 1997
They nauseate and sicken me. They’ve destroyed the sanctity of motherhood.
— Bashing feminists this time, not gay people
Vanity Fair, 1998
There is little reason left for society to respect women as it once did. Women get knocked up. They don’t marry. They have abortions. They go to bars. They get knocked up again.
— August 13, 1999
I believe affirmative action in the area of gender has resulted in jamming many people into roles that are unnatural for them and undesirable for the rest of us.
— March 3, 2000
Women now realize that everything heterosexual, feminine, masculine, motherly, womanly and longed for in a committed relationship has been under vicious attack by the National Organization of (I don’t know what kind of) Women-types.
— WorldNetDaily column, March 5, 2004
Did sometimes you get involved with him sexually and you weren’t really interested, but he lit your fire and you got into it? Well then, you don’t have to feel like it, do you? I think women underestimate how emotionally important it is for men to feel accepted.
— Date unknown; quoted in the Times Online
April 19, 2004
I don’t care if you’re not in the mood! Imagine how domineering and cruel it is to deny him that! There are hundreds and thousands of women who don’t realise they’re on a countdown. When the kids turn 18, he’s GONE — and it’s because he’s tired of being marginalized and hurt.
— ibid.
Women have been sexually liberated into the notion of becoming unpaid whores — as early as middle school — where girls across the country go on their knees for boys, even in the classroom.
— WorldNetDaily column, May 7, 2004
Messiah complex:
I am a prophet.
— To the Los Angeles Times, 1998
I have never, ever said that I was a prophet! That’s a total, complete lie.
— To Vanity Fair, 1998. Adds VF’s Leslie Bennetts: “She said it twice,” reports the [Times] writer, Janet Wiscombe.”)
Rabbi means teacher; I am one. … I give evidence of God’s presence on earth!
— ibid.
My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals, etcetera, of the entity — that has ended.
— Publicly renouncing Judaism, August 14, 2003
More dysfunctional, disordered, deviant, destructive aberrations:
I’ve always told people, who opposed homosexuality, that they were homophobic, bad, bigoted and idiotic. I was wrong. It is destructive.
— August 13, 1998
The gay culture? I’m trying to understand, what is that? I remember the 70s and 80s that the line was that this is only about sex, it’s not about anything else, right? So what’s the gay culture? Is that where we get into the promiscuity and the pedophilia? Or are these just regulation human beings, who somehow have an error in their sexual orientation but otherwise are seriously regulation human beings? I’m confused.
— April 16, 1999
When we have the word “homosexual,” we are clarifying the dysfunction, the deviancy, the reality. We change it to the word “gay,” and it makes it more difficult to pinpoint the truth. So one of the things that the homosexual agenda did was to change the name. Just like somebody complained to me yesterday about ethnic cleansing, that it sounds like washing machine as opposed to murder. They were right. Ethnic cleansing sounds nice. Murder is the truth, homosexuality is the truth. Gay isn’t.
— August 12, 1999
Yes, the Catholic Church holds that homosexual sexual orientation is objectively disordered — and it is, because human beings are geared to be heterosexual. That’s how we reproduce. So it is objectively disordered. … They also hold that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil, because they follow biblical teachings.
— September 8, 1999
I have absolutely zero problem with a homosexual or a lesbian becoming President of the United States, if they can do the job…as long as they were celibate, and did not bring disdain to marriage and demonstrate the First Family as deviant sexual behavior.
— ibid.
Okay, here it is: heterosexuality is the biological norm for human beings. Men have a penis and testicles. They make sperm to enter the vagina of a female who makes ova, and that’s how we make new children, with the nurturing and protection of the mother and the father. That is the norm. Behavior away from that is outside the norm. It is abnormal.
— November 23, 1999
The ol’ slippery slope:
The debate over gay rights. Rights? Rights?! For sexual deviants, sexual behavior, there are now rights. That’s what I am worried about with the pedophilia, the bestiality and the sado-masochism. Is this all going to be rights too? To deviant sexual behavior. It is deviant sexual behavior. Why does deviant sexual behavior get rights? I don’t understand that.
— June 10, 1999
But if you’re going to legitimize two men or two women equivalent to a heterosexual situation, the floodgates are open. …
How about you tell me if two men can be sanctified and legalized in this country as marriage, then what is your logical or justifiable reason to exclude adult incest? A man and a woman, consensual, twenty-five years old, who are brother and sister, should not be discriminated against because they have a genetic relationship. They love each other. What about the other siblings and the parents? Well, you know, too bad. They’re bigoted and intolerant.
How about an adult mother and her adult consenting son? How about an adult father and his adult consenting daughter? …
So all these things become legitimized, because there’s no logical reason not to. …
And there is no justifiable reason not to have adult consenting brothers and sisters, adult consenting parents and children, teams of people, groups of people, adults with consenting teenagers, kids with each other — tell me how, if you legitimize same-sex relationships, what is the logical or justifiable reason to exclude all these other things. Babies with a lot of people, unmarried. Shacking up babies, custody… What is the logical or justifiable reason to exclude any of those activities, behaviors or combinations? There isn’t any!
— December 21, 1999
Some people just wrote me defending gay sex; I sent it back, saying that was not the question, the question is the following: a 60-year-old male and female meet, they find out they were siblings, can they marry? …
So once the homosexual barrier is down, the incest barrier goes down… I guess there are no barriers. So the argument of “what will this do to families”… isn’t it clear?
— February 10, 2000
Splitting hairs:
I have never called homosexuals biological mistakes. I have said the sexual orientation is clearly an error. With penises and vaginas we were meant for heterosexual sexual acting out in order to procreate the species. I mean that is just irrefutable. … I have never called homosexuals errors. I have called the sexuality an error. … It’s dysfunctional, it’s deviant. According to religion it is not moral. But biologically it is clearly an error.
— August 24, 1999
Unless I have hallucinated, I have never made an anti-gay commentary. I have made anti-gay-activist-agenda commentaries.
— February 23, 2000
I never called homosexual human beings deviants. I have pointed out that homosexual behavior deviates from the norm of heterosexuality and is forbidden by Scriptures.
— To Time magazine, July 3, 2000
I understand there are t-shirts now that say, “I am not a biological error.” Well, that means that the people buying this believe that I said they, as human beings, were biological errors, and that’s a lie. …
Now, let’s get to the other one: I’ve called people “deviants.” Well, there are. Anybody who goes after a kid, to me, is a serious deviant, is evil, and they should be strung up by their you-know-whats. But, that’s not what I said. I didn’t call homosexuals deviant.
— August 15, 2000
Playing the victim card (or: “Those nasty ol’ gays are being mean to me! Waaaaaaah!“):
Articles get published about me that I’m mean, I’m bad, I’
m phobic, I’m hateful, I’m murderous — all kinds of crap. So I understand personally how difficult it is, but if you folks don’t start standing up for heterosexual marriage and heterosexuality pretty soon, that which you know as this country and family is going to be gone.
— June 22, 1999
Interestingly enough, I am accused by the activists of inciting hate, which is totally absurd, and yet it is they who incite hate toward me. I don’t know of any gay person who has gotten a death threat attributed to anything I said on the air. But I have gotten them based on the misrepresentation of my views by activists.
— To The Advocate (Diss Jockey)
February 15, 2000
I’ve cried more at times than I would like to admit because to see my name, my character, my person come under attack… It’s astonishing to have your name smeared with such vitriol. I wouldn’t wish it on people I dislike. It’s been agonizing.
— To the question, “What’s been the toll the
controversy with the gay community has taken?”
Time magazine, July 3, 2000…to which GLAAD’s Joan M. Garry responded in the July 17 issue: “If Laura has ‘cried more at times than I would like to admit’ in response to lesbians’ and gays’ speaking out against her, she has nothing on the misery she has caused us with her virulent and prejudicial denouncements. For a woman who claims to be all about the family, has she considered how many families with lesbian and gay members she has torn apart with her destructive words? Laura can dry her eyes anytime she wants, just by telling the truth.”
[S]pecial interest political homosexual activist groups got into serious, severe gear… to mobilize, sort of the non-activist, what I call “civilians” out there, civilians, to believe that I am hate-filled, and to believe that my position comes out of hate or prejudice or bigotry, when it doesn’t.
— August 15, 2000
[A book reviewer] impugned my validity as a psychotherapist by asserting that since I did not have a relationship with my mother for the last two decades, I could not possibly have anything to offer people in need of guidance. She then finished me off with suggestion that the only people interested in my book-signing would be those who wanted to visit a homophobe.
My heart was so hurt. Frankly, my mother’s lack of mothering hurt both me and my sister our whole lives; to have a “journalist” use that fact against me is adding insult to injury — but it is the way critics, who don’t seem to be able to argue adequately against my traditional positions, try to discredit me in the eyes of others.
Furthermore, my two dear lesbian friends were equally devastated to see me attacked as a homophobe. They both realize that we disagree on a number of philosophical points, but we still share mutual respect and affection. The homosexual activists and other liberal activists don’t seem to be able to disagree without attempting to destroy the opposing position. …
But my heart hurt from that unprofessional, vicious, personal attack.
— WorldNetDaily column, July 8, 2003
There are probably more Internet hate sites about me than Charles Manson. In fact, I don’t think there are any hate sites about Charles Manson, but if you call up my name on one of these things, you will find hundreds of thousands of just demeaning, hateful, hostile, ugly things about me, and I walk around sometimes in circles trying to think, gee, I am trying to help people lead better lives. Why does that engender so much hate?
— To fellow Conservative Babylonian Joe Scarborough
Scarborough Country, December 29, 2005
But while “Dr.” Laura is a victim, Matthew Shepard was not:
You know what was largely responsible for that guy’s [Matthew Shepard's] death? Those two guys who killed him did not go out looking for a homosexual to kill that night. They were shooting pool. He went to the bar. He left with two guys he thought he was gonna have sex with. He got murdered. How many women has that happened to? How many women have left bars thinking they were gonna get some action with some guy who raped and murdered and tortured and murdered them? … If Matthew hadn’t been willing to leave for sex, he might still be alive.
— April 16, 1999
Gays = Nazis, commies, welfare queens, McCarthyists, and the Mafia:
So perhaps you could help me, because I want to … coin a phrase here, and I don’t mind help. What would be the communication version of “ethnic cleansing?” Because that’s what in particular the homosexual activists try to do.
— Comparing protests by her gay opponents to genocide
August 11, 1999
Indeed, there are many who advocate and/or directly profit from the decline of the traditional family, including homosexual activists, radical feminists, welfare advocates and the child-care industry.
— Parenthood by Proxy (2000)
So my son and I were discussing fascism and Nazism, communism… and we were discussing how somebody takes over — how a group with a powerful individual, charismatic person… How do they actually take over? And I said to him, ’cause if you look back at Nazi Germany, you’ll see how this started, it starts with name-calling. …
So I was explaining to my son that in order for any group to dominate, it has to have certain tactics. And the tactics clearly have to be aimed at curtailing or eliminating any kind of competition, any kind of opponents. …
Now I’m starting with the most egregious and the most horrible examples of this in human history, but I see seeds of this in this country. As you all know, there is a incredibly emotional debate going on about whether or not the United States of America should sanctify two men or two women in a marriage.
— Lead-in to comparing supporters of same-sex marriage to Nazis
February 10, 2000
The well-funded and well-connected homosexual activist movement has become the McCarthyism of the 21st century.
— In the Deseret News, May 13, 2000
When organizations that have nothing to do with homosexuality which have me talking about nothing that has to do with homosexuality get bomb threats, what am I supposed to do about that, especially when the bomb threats would include children dying? You didn’t hear about that, either, did you? I didn’t think so. You didn’t hear about threats to organizations and companies that they would take them down. Not influencing people to make a moral decision about my show or not, but threatening them to destroy their business.
Now, I was born in Brooklyn. We call that the “Black Hand.” Remember that? Got a piece of paper with a black hand mark on it, which meant if you didn’t acquiesce to their demands, you’re gone. That’s not right. That’s not American. That’s not fair.
— Comparing her gay critics to the Mafia, and insinuating that those same critics were threatening to (literally) bomb her sponsors
August 15, 2000
But yet:
Never did I imply that homosexual
s or lesbians were inherently bad people, inherently evil people, inherently destructive people, or anything negative.
— February 10, 2000
From the WTF?! Ward of the She’s Finally Lost It State Hospital:
It was funny, yesterday on my TV show, as a quick aside, we did race relations between blacks and whites. And that’s not an easy subject to talk about because issues like race, color of one’s skin, all the historical issues, are personal. They’re personal; they’re not just about ideas or opinions. It’s personal. And what was really remarkable — and I am very grateful for — is that you know, for a 43-minute show you do about two hours of work. ‘Cause you have to move tables around, stop, start, do all this stuff. And the amount of passion, the concepts, the opinions, the feelings, the questions, it was wonderful. But, it was risky in a way, but that’s — I’m from Brooklyn, and that’s not an issue — because it’s a lot easier to argue data than it is to deal with passionate feelings. This next issue, also, is that kind of personal and passionate. …When I made my transition from zero to Judaism, much less to serious Judaism, I had to struggle with many things: not shopping on Saturdays, cheeseburgers. I mean these were some of the things.
— Incomprehensible rambling (that continued
nonstop like this for another ten minutes)
August 15, 2000
Memorable observations:
“Everyone who’s known her hates her — and on some level she knows it,” says Marilyn Kagan, a radio host who incurred Schlessinger’s enmity.— Vanity Fair, 1998
The person you hear on the radio is Laura. There is no persona.
Dr. Laura is popular because she offers listeners an orgy of barely-repressed sadomasochism under the guise of inspiration, instruction, and self-help. Part of this appeal derives from the malicious joy taken in the suffering of others. Listeners can relish the ritual humiliation meted out by the austere and forbidding Dr. Laura, enjoying the dominatrix act from the safety of their own homes.
— Michael Bronski
Dr. Laura: Moral Dominatrix
ZMag
May, 2000
Schlessinger … mixes her religious convictions with “science” and packages both as the only truth. Schlessinger presents herself as a mental health practitioner qualified to give life advice to her audience. She is not. Schlessinger’s doctorate is not medical, and she is not a member of either the psychiatric or psychological communities. Her opinions on sexual orientation are personal. Yet she cloaks her moral pronouncements in a pseudo-clinical context and uses psychiatric terminology and diagnoses to suggest that lesbians and gay men are disordered or mentally ill.
Interestingly, Schlessinger has repeatedly claimed to know that being gay or lesbian is the result of a biological error — hardly a “moral” position. Yet when probed for more information, admits that she is not an expert in this area, retreating back to her insistence that her convictions are rooted in religion.
If it weren’t against her principle against inter-faith relationships, Dr. Laura would probably be sleeping with William F. Buckley, Jr.
[H]er attitude about gays is only a small part of the Physiologist Laura Problem. …
[S]he not only models intolerance and abusive behavior but also advocates such behavior — even violence. She cuts people off — people calling for help, people trusting her with their problems. She calls people names: “he’s evil,” “you’re a whore,” “they’re crappy people,” “you’re a doormat,” “they’re both sickos.” In one recent call, a mom expressed concern about a relative who was “touchy,” and Schlessinger insisted, twice, that she inform him that if he came within five feet of anyone in her family, she’d “haul off and belt him across the mouth.” Alas, the caller replied, “I can do that.”
Dr Laura Schlessinger makes the Stepford Wives look like feminists…
It would be a mistake to assume that the title of Dr Laura’s latest book [The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands] contains even a trace of irony; there is none.
Mrs. Bowers is outraged. I haven’t been this angry since German tourists discovered Prague. I am, of course, in an absolute stew over the Vermont Supreme Court ruling that those damned homosexuals have a right to be in committed relationships.
Fortunately, there are people with the courage to speak out against homos being allowed to stay together. While I am usually reluctant to even acknowledge (much less praise) the unsaved, I must thank radio entertainer Laura Schlessinger for recognizing the marketing opportunity the Vermont decision presented for her show. While she is not someone I would have handpicked to speak on moral issues, not every porn-posing, home wrecking, fornicating, divorcee has an audience of millions who can flood Vermont with outraged calls on cue!
— Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian
Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them. …
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? …
4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this a
pplies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? …
— Author unknown
“Dear Dr. Laura“
Suggested Torah readings for “Dr.” Schlessinger:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
— Exodus 20:3, 12, 14, 16-17
In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.
But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;
I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it.
— Deuteronomy 30:16-18
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