Box Turtle Bulletin

Dr. Laura Announces End To Her Radio Program

One week after enduring mounting criticism over using a racial epithet on her radio show, Laura Schlessinger announced that she will not renew her contract when it expires at the end of the year.

Schlessinger has a long history of anti-gay comments on her program, but to my knowledge I don’t think she ever used the word “faggot.” But according to a transcript posted at Media Matters, she repeated the word “nigger” eleven times to a black woman in an interracial relationship who called for advice on how to deal with insensitive comments and treatment from some of her in-laws. Schlessinger later apologized, but continues to blame the media for her woes.

In 2000, Schlessinger attempted to launch a television show based on her radio call-in advice program. That effort was met with calls for a boycott by LGBT groups who were angry over her strong anti-gay stance. She called homosexuality a “biological error” and a deviancy, compared gay parenting to pedophilia by saying that “a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys,” and blamed Matthew Shepard for his own murder. In the same year, Schlessinger wrote a forward to a book by controversial ex-gay “coach” Richard Cohen, who himself would later incurred a lifetime expulsion from the American Counseling Association for ethical violations.  Schlessinger endorsed his book, writing:

We live in a world in which the radical homosexual activists have, through aggressive lobbying and successful strategic initiatives successfully managed to infiltrate and effect change in government, public schools, churches, and even in our scientific institutes. Slowly and ever so surely, they are deconstructing the conventional family in order to accommodate their own personal desires and political goals. In the name of human rights and equality, the extremists in the homosexual community have altered the fundamental fabric of cultural and moral norms.

…Though they would like yo to believe otherwise, the homosexual activists do not concern themselves with the welfare of individuals. Theyare not dedicated to the betterment of society or the freedom of the people. What these zealots really want to do is shove everyone who believes differently than they into the closet and throw away the key. Like many other fringe extremist groups, they are concerned with furthering a political agenda and rebuilding the infrastructure of traditional morality.

…Richard Cogen is living, breathing, loving testimony to his own assertions that homosexuality can be cured and anyone willing to make that change has the right to do so. With intellect and care, he offers invaluable insight into the reasons for same-sex attractions and, for those willing to brave it, he illuminates a challenging journey from the isolation.

That’s right. Schlessinger thought Cohen was a man of intellect and care.

In more recent years, Schlessinger has evolved somewhat on her radio program. She no longer believes that ex-gay therapy is effective and she has provided a bit more of a gay-positive stance. Bbut she also has been trying to doctor her anti-gay past and continues to play the victim over the cancellation of her short-lived television career due to poor ratings — and controversy over a staff member appearing twice on her program as a “guest” on two consecutive days (on the second day, she appeared in different hair and makeup as a woman living with her boyfriend).

While her radio program will come to an end in another four months her so, she says she will continue to speak and write books. But undoubtedly, her influence will wane without her daily platform. And so her career tapers down much as it began, as a tough-talking but thin-skinned and angry woman railing against the injustices of her imagination.