Can Dr. Laura Be Tolerated?

May 11, 2000

Canada is a land that values tolerance so highly that it prosecutes those it deems intolerant. The historian David Irving has been banned from the country for his views on World War II. Now the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) is training its sights on Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the conservative radio moralist.

The CBSC has just released a report charging that Dr. Laura’s views on homosexuality “may well fertilize the ground” for violence against homosexuals, though it concedes that she disapproves of murder even more strongly than she disapproves of sodomy.

Nevertheless, her disapproval of sodomy as “abnormal and deviant” is bad enough: why, it’s “a quarter of century out of date in the opinion of professional psychiatric [associations].” Not wrong, mind you: just, in some people’s “opinion,” “out of date.”

All Canadians, or visitors to Canada, or broadcasters who beam their programs to Canada, have a moral obligation to promulgate opinions that are up to date, according to the current opinions of the psychiatric profession.

Psychiatry isn’t much of a science; it ranks with phrenology in its analytical cogency and predictive power. But nobody can deny that it’s trendy. And that’s what counts for the CBSC. Morality is dictated by the iron law of fashion, and pretty ill-defined fashion at that.

Dr. Laura takes a different view. She is an Orthodox Jew, and she upholds a moral code that has existed for thousands of years. That code has worked very well, sustaining Jewish and Christian communities through thick and thin.

The same can’t be said for the New Morality, also known as the Sexual Revolution, which in three decades has amassed an incredibly destructive record of divorce, illegitimacy, disease, abortion, and crime. Homosexuality, especially the male kind, has proved an epidemic health and sanitation problem, just as one might expect from an abuse of sexual and excretory organs.

How brainy do you have to be to foresee what’s likely to happen when a life-giving organ is inserted into the poop chute? Whose idea of love is that? Normal intercourse produces human life (also under attack); homosexual intercourse spawns only bacterial life.

But I’d better be careful. I don’t want to wind up in a Canadian prison. As the CBSC report says ominously: “In Canada, we respect freedom of speech but do not worship it. Whether or not Americans are so protected in their country is a non-issue for the CBSC.”

Right. Canada has to protect itself against such pernicious, hate-filled American notions as the Law of Moses. If Dr. Laura wants to spew the Ten Commandments, let her do it in her own country.

It isn’t just Canada, of course. Organized Sodom in these United States is trying to block Dr. Laura from getting a TV show, on grounds that she stands for “hate” — though for sheer rancid hate, the “gay” groups themselves are hard to beat. Colleges and universities across the country are adopting “hate speech” codes that punish the mildest criticism of homosexuals and other “minorities.” The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination cracks down on private businesses that, in its opinion, “ridicule or create a racial stereotype and make certain people feel unwelcome.” Even Major League Baseball now condemns errant speakers to “sensitivity training.”

Liberals used to love free speech, waving the First Amendment as their banner. That was when they felt weak. Now that they hold positions of power, especially in academia, they’ve decided that some kinds of speech mustn’t be tolerated. Homosexuals may defile churches and insult a cardinal with obscenities, but the mildest disapproval of sodomy itself must be crushed.

Hypocrisy? Yes. Double standards? Only superficially. At bottom, there is a real single standard at work here: “Absolute free speech for our side; no freedom at all for the enemy.” What rights you have, or whether you have any rights at all, depends entirely on whether you are deemed “progressive” (up to date) or “reactionary” (attached to tradition).

The “progressive” forces want to destroy freedom, yes, but their real goal is the destruction of normal life itself. That’s why they attach a sacramental importance to abortion as well as to the filthiest couplings imaginable.

Joseph Sobran

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