Let your opinion be heard.

Please call:
Kerry McCluggage - Chairman
Paramount Television Group
- Telephone (323) 956-5076
5555 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038

Frank Kelly - Co-President
Paramount Television Group
- Telephone (323.) 956.5000
- dial 1, * (star), then spell "KellyFrank" to be connected
5555 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038

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  QUESTION: Why are you criticizing Dr. Laura?
  ANSWER: Ms. Schlessinger has used her radio show to wrongly suggest that homosexuality is a "biological error," sexually "deviant," that a "huge portion" of gay men are pedophiles who prey on young children, and that gays and lesbians need "reparative therapy" to fix them.
   
  QUESTION: But isn't all that true?
  ANSWER: No it's not. Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association - the experts on such issues - have found that gay men and lesbians are not only perfectly normal, but that there is no scientific evidence linking gay people and pedophilia. In fact the overwhelming majority of pedophiles are heterosexual males. In addition, both organizations, along with the American Medical Association, say "reparative therapy" to "cure" gays not only doesn't work, but it could be harmful. Many anti-gay lobbyists like the Family Research Council, who Ms. Schlessinger often uses for her "research", rely on discredited data from a man named Paul Cameron, whose research and credibility was debunked by scholars years ago.
   
  QUESTION: So are you saying she's a bigot?
  ANSWER: HateWatch.org, a civil rights organization that monitors hate and extremist organizations, has called Ms. Schlessinger's anti-gay rhetoric "bigoted," and likened her quotes to the prejudiced pronouncements of David Duke and Fred Phelps. And the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized Ms. Schlessinger's rhetoric in a March 24, 2000 letter: "We believe that a tone of demonization and needless hostility characterizes your remarks on these issues... we are concerned that others might use such statements to justify acts of violence or discriminate against gays and lesbians."
   
  QUESTION: But Ms. Schlessinger says she is motivated by religion, not bigotry?
  ANSWER: Actually, Ms. Schlessinger switches between saying her anti-gay rhetoric is based on her religion, her interpretation of science, and her politics, depending on the interview (she's even compared herself to the Pope). The issue here is really one of tolerance and fairness. Our coalition is made up of many people of faith, but none of us has ever used our religion as a justification to defame an entire class of American citizens - and if we did, Paramount would never give us a TV show. We expect the same respect in return.
   
  QUESTION: So your answer it to censor Ms. Schlessinger?
  ANSWER: We are asking Paramount to apply the same standards to gay Americans as it would African-Americans or Jewish-Americans. If Paramount wouldn't give a TV show to someone who called African-Americans biological errors (and we hope they would not), then they shouldn't give one to someone who defames gays and lesbians.
   
  QUESTION: How dare you compare gay civil rights to the civil rights battles of African-Americans?
  ANSWER: Coretta Scott King said on the 30th anniversary of her husband's assassination: "'I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,' she said. 'But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' 'I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,' she said. 'Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery (and) Selma (Alabama), in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement," King said." (Reuters, March 31, 1998).
   
  QUESTION: But even if the gay civil rights struggle is legitimate, doesn't Ms. Schlessinger have the right to free speech?
  ANSWER: She absolutely does, and she exercises it daily to over 20 million radio listeners. But Ms. Schlessinger's critics also have the right to free speech, including the right to notify Paramount and corporate America of their concerns (a time-honored tradition in the civil rights movement). Ironically, Ms. Schlessinger used her Web site as recently as last December to launch an online campaign critical of legislation benefiting gays and lesbians - but when a Web site is used by gays and lesbians to launch an online campaign critical of a TV show benefiting Ms. Schlessinger, she suddenly invokes the Constitution. But nowhere in the Constitution is Ms. Schlessinger guaranteed the right to a TV show, and more importantly, the government is doing nothing to abridge Ms. Schlessinger's right to speak (a legal pre-requisite for a free speech claim).

The issue here is not free speech, it's money. The studios have standards for what they will and won't broadcast, but when gays and lesbians are the targets they look the other way. No television studio would host a show by someone who called African-Americans biological errors. And in fact, when Jimmy the Greek suggested blacks were biologically different, he got fired. But when Ms. Schlessinger suggests gays and lesbians are biological errors, she gets a TV show. That's a free speech smoke-screen, and an anti-gay double standard.
   
  QUESTION: But isn't Ms. Schlessinger saying that any attempt to stifle speech is an attack on the First Amendment?
  ANSWER: She may be saying that now, but in November of 1999, while attacking a 14-year-old girl's essay defending free speech (see below), Ms. Schlessinger wrote: "The First Amendment is not the Eleventh Commandment. Its protection does not extend to ALL speech." (Source: Charleston Post and Courier, Dec. 2, 1999.) Ms. Schlessinger is also a strong proponent of placing Internet filtering software in public libraries to censor what information the public can and can't obtain, in fact one of her first TV shows was about this very issue. And in the fall of 1999, she launched an on-the-air tirade against a California surf shop that was selling a skateboarding magazine she didn't like, demanding the publication be pulled from the store. (She even sued the surf shop owner for calling her a liar - imagine what she would have done had he called her a pedophile or a biological error?) It seems Ms. Schlessinger defends free speech when she's the one being criticized.

More importantly, the American Civil Liberties Union (they're the folks who even defend the Nazis' right to free speech) says that free speech is not an issue here: "When Paramount decides that it wants to put on Dr. Laura, or doesn't want to put on Dr. Laura, the government's not involved. And therefore the First Amendment and the freedom of speech, the legal freedom of speech protections, don't apply." - ACLU's Peter Eliasberg on ABC's World News Tonight, 5/20/00.
   
  QUESTION: Hasn't Ms. Schlessinger already toned down her anti-gay rhetoric?
  ANSWER: No. As recently as Feb. 16, 2000 the New York Post quoted her as comparing gay marriage to incest, and on August 15, 2000, she again reiterated, on the radio to 20m listeners, that homosexuality is an "error."
   
  QUESTION: But I read she apologized?
  ANSWER: Ms. Schlessinger issued a half-hearted "statement" on March 10, but then retracted it 5 days later. In the staement, she denied having said most of the quotes attributed to her, and said those which are true were intended to be taken in a "clinical" rather than "judgmental" way - as though suggesting someone is a biological error and a pedophile does not imply judgement. She issued a similar statement in Dec. 1999 after berating a young girl on the air.
   
  QUESTION: What is this story about her berating a young girl on the air?
  ANSWER: On October 25, 1999 Ms. Schlessinger "savaged" (as the local paper called it) a 14-year-old girl, on the air, nationwide, because she disagreed with the eighth-grader's award-winning essay defending free speech. According to last year's November 9 and November 11 Hartford Courant, Ms. Schlessinger called the girl's ideas "stupid" and "dangerous," and said "If she was my daughter, I'd probably put her up for adoption.'' Ms. Schlessinger also went on to suggest that the child be "sacrificed," in the tradition of the Incas who ritually murdered their own children, and made references to the girl being kidnapped. Ms. Schlessinger added: "Poor Sara [the essay winner] doesn't get it. When she makes her marriage vows and her husband has sex with everybody else, let's see if she thinks that this philosophy works." [This story was confirmed with the Hartford Courant on March 11, 2000]
   
  QUESTION: And why is this story relevant to the current controversy?
  ANSWER: Because Ms. Schlessinger's on-the-air attacks on gays and lesbians are clearly not a one-time thing - she has done this to others before. How many more apologies will it take, and how many more people need to be hurt, before Paramount gets the picture?
   
  QUESTION: Ms. Schlessinger denies ever making any anti-gay commentary. On Feb. 23, 2000, she said on the air (quoted by the Associated Press) "I have never made antigay commentary. I've made antigay activist agenda commentaries, but I've never made antigay commentary." Is this true?
  ANSWER: Many of Ms. Schlessinger's most hurtful words have been directed at all gay Americans, not so-called "activists." In her own words: · "How many letters have I read on the air from gay men who acknowledge that a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys?", Reuters/Variety, Feb. 13, 2000. · "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." Ms. Schlessinger's Web site, December 8, 1998 (she just recently took that quote down).