My blog today has to do with teaching you how to respond to lies. Most importantly, lies about me. At 63 years of age (okay, 63 and a half), I am absolutely blown away by the casual meanness and vulgarity that passes for opinion and discourse. In my early years, if you wrote or verbally gave an argument that had even a tinge of nastiness (forget the vulgarity), both you and your point of view would be flushed…intellectually disqualified. Nowadays though, people feel frighteningly free to criticize with vulgarities, insults, lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations, character assassination and downright ferocious meanness.

Nothing new here. I’ve been commenting on this for a while, but last night a friend approached me…a friend approached me and asked me how he should handle a particular situation. (I thought I was getting into “Dr. Laura gear”). Somebody had contacted him and challenged him about being my friend because, (and to quote that person) “she hates gays”. For almost a dozen years (I think they’re automatically renewed computer-wise daily…you’ve probably seen it or heard about it), a blog appears under different sources, ostensibly asking me to answer questions about some of the Bible’s entries about slavery, daughters…so forth. It supposes that I ever quoted Leviticus that homosexuality is an abomination. That never happened. I repeat: that never happened. I never said that. I don’t believe that.

In fact (which they will deny…don’t you love activism?) I was one of the earliest radio hosts to support organizations such as PFLAG (you know, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and other efforts to encourage openness and acceptance of gays in their own families, much less society. But to my surprise (but not naivetë), to many activists, truth is irrelevant when the intent is to rally support through raising passions, especially negative passions. Get people angry and they stop thinking for themselves.

Here’s the truth: I’m for marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. I’m for children having the benefit of a married mommy and daddy, which by the way also means that you straight women should not intentionally exclude a daddy from your kid’s lives just because you want to be a mommy. But most importantly, you listen every day, you hear I take calls almost daily from gay men and women asking my advice on personal and family matters. These are the people who know the truth about me because, you know what, they actually listen to my daily radio program. They call because they know I can and will help. And every week I receive letters from listeners and fans who are gay and thank me when I take a call or read a letter from another gay listener, and here’s what they think, in their own words (let me get this ready…okay):

“Thank you for reading the email from the gay gentleman. I’m a gay woman (I don’t like the word ‘lesbian’) [she writes] and listen to you faithfully. I applaud you for protecting children and keeping people on the right path. I echo the feelings of the gay man who emailed you today. I am and have been single for 10 years. I just wanted to let you know how much I agree with you on how to make relationships work. I only wish I had found you before my partner left. If I had, I don’t think she would have ended the relationship. I hope more people in gay relationships will listen to you.”

Here’s another one:

“I just heard you read the email over the air from the faithful gay listener. Add me to the column! I’m a gay male in central Virginia who listens to you every day after I get home from work. I’ve been listening regularly for the past three years and I wouldn’t miss it. Gay or straight…white, black, green, purple, or blue…Momma Laura knows how to knock some sense into people’s heads.”

[Laughs] And, something I saved…something I saved. Here’s a call I got recently from a gay listener [listen to the audio here]

Caller: Thank you Dr. Laura.

Dr. L: Thank you.

Caller: I have to say, right off the bat that I need to apologize to you publicly because I wrote you a nasty-gram under the impression that you were against gay people. And I know better now, so I deeply apologize for that.

Dr. L: Thank you. How kind of you and thank you very much, and I accept your apology.

Caller: Thank you.

In fact, I get (brace yourself) disappointed and angry emails each week from people upset that I help gay callers. I give advice to gays and lesbians who call my show. One radio station dropped me because I give advice to gays and lesbians. Quite openly, I have been personally very hurt over the years with the misrepresentation which has led to a generation of folks who haven’t read my books, haven’t attended a “one-woman show”, haven’t listened to my radio show, yet presumed to know me and what I stand for. Having people believe that I’m a bigot and hate me…and “hate” is the word…is horrible, frustrating, demoralizing and unbelievably painful.

So my answer to my friend who wanted to know what he should say to people who challenge him being my friend, is to tell those people to listen to my show. I am happy to have any and all draw their own conclusions about me from an informed position, for a change, by listening to my program for a month or two. So there is a lesson in all of this: don’t let anybody tell you how to feel about another person without exploring the situation yourself and don’t waste hate. Save hate for those who…like the Taliban, hang to their necks until dead seven year old children in order to scare a village and take control. That’s where hate ought to go

I think you bring a good point. Much discrimination is not based in hatred, but in a feeling of superiority.

They are making decisions for us because us poor childlike blacks, gays, and women simply aren’t smart or sophisticated or righteous enough to know what is best for our own lives. So, “out of love”, they’ll decide for us.

And, of course, their decisions are the ones that keep us safely in our places not disturbing their superiority.

Very entertaining!!!!

It’s analogous to Fred Phelps’ picketing Jerry Falwell’s funeral: “How dare your hostility have a limit somewhere! You must be infinitely hostile like me!”

In the meantime, it’s not like the results of all this are innocuous and maintain gay people in a relatively simple state of invisibility. Indeed, any challenges or protests to this incursion on gay lives is seen as a ‘war’ or threat to heterosexuals, their children and lives they lead.

Yet, when such things as gang rapes of lesbians, suicides of tender young children, children taken away and property dispersed to the state, leaving significant others destitute, and careers destroyed, all this is called a ‘difference of opinion’
rather than a deliberate devastation.

And people like Dr. Laura and so on, don’t want to account for, or even address that these things happen. No matter WHAT destruction visits a gay person, people like Maggie G, see themselves as the victims.
And offensively place God in the position of abusive parent to rationalize what they do.

In other words, the ‘we’re being cruel to be kind’ or ‘it’s for your own good’ school of it’s their right to treat gay people any way they like because no abusive parents EVER want to be held accountable.
The go into denial that what they do has terrible consequences. They blame the object of it all as ‘having no choice but making them do it.’

I grew up with parents and grandparents that lived most of their lives under Jim Crow. There has always been a paternalistic abusive psychology to how women, blacks and gay people have been treated throughout time.
Those who were dominant placed themselves in such a role, and expect women/blacks/gays to NEVER challenge, contradict or prove them wrong.
And ANY opportunity to do that, is repressed socio/politically.

There isn’t much freedom to prove just how repressive their political actions really are. You see that most public forums where someone could make up their own mind isn’t available. Like the Prop. 8 trial.
Like the anonymity of the voting booth. Look at how Tony Perkins can sit in and speak on a hearing for Elena Kagan, but could state rep John Lewis? Or Andrew Young? Or Dan Choi? Men who, by their history or service, prove their interests in freedom for everyone. A distinction, Tony Perkins does NOT have.

There are no sterling leaders among the anti gay. Just people with a lot more opportunity to spread their fertilizer. A lot more aggression and a lot more money. And yet pretend they don’t have any of that. They are just these poor people who struggle against the powerful tide of gay visibility and they are the only thing standing between total societal break down.

And the public STILL knows less about gay people, than the other way around. But to hear the opposition tell it, there is a great conspiracy among gay people to keep their ‘real’ agenda hidden.
Easy to say when you don’t invite gay people to be open. Or give any opportunity to the same to speak on their own behalf.

Dick Cheney can slip in a Gay-positive comment,

and so can Laura Bush make Gay-friendly comments (now that hubby george is out),

Well it is just all fine and good to attempt to cloud the once the real positions of their political partys which have been repeatedly made crystal clear, all in an effort to bolster dwindling polls.

Generally, conservatives hate us, and they will never support us as a party. This is the bottom line. I for one am not fooled in the slightest by them. Should they display evidence to the contrary, then I might be persuaded. Hasn’t happened yet. I’ll watch, but I won’t hold my breath, or vote for cons until I see results, not promises.

Well the same is the case with Dr. Laura; making statements to soften her previous positions in order to bolster her dwindling popularity (trying to sell us her product w/ lies.

Too little, too late, and blatantly hypocrytical. In plain terms, BS.

We all know how she thinks.

If I recall correctly Her Mother died suddenly during Laura’s “anti-gay =
period” (NO pun intended.)

Laura and her mother had been estranged and didn’t speak for years, and =
she voiced openly on the air
her disappointment that her Mother died without any chance or =
opportunity for Laura to tell her that
despite their differences, etc. that laura did love her yada, yada.

A few days later, Laura read on her radio show a letter she received =
from an openly gay man who told
her that when he came out to his family, they threw him out of the house =
and told him they never wanted
to see him again. The guy explained his feelings when he heard that his =
Mom had died, and nobody told
him she was sick, etc.

It was a major turning point in her public attitude towards gay people.

I thought you should know this anecdote, too!

Thanks so much for B.T.B. I LOVE it!

Keep up the excellent work,

2. Her nudie pictures posted by an ex. She could no longer tell any young women how stupid they were for letting a bf or husband take such photos or do anything else that could be posted on the net and come back to bite them. It sure bit Dr. L on her bony ass.

Her handling of the nude pics pretty much cemented my opinion of her as the worst sort of hypocrite. The pictures themselves didn’t bother me, but her response did.

If she were truly interested in practicing what she preaches, she’d have used the occasion to say something like, “I made a foolish decision when I allowed a boyfriend to take those pictures. Now I am embarrassed by something I did a long time ago. Learn from my experience – when you’re tempted to do something, ask yourself how you’d feel if it became public knowledge many years later.”

Instead, she whined about how she was some kind of victim. She never took any responsibility for her role (and she never claimed that those pictures were taken without her knowledge). It was all “wah, wah, people are being mean to me.”