Dr. Laura Schlessinger is getting her own TV show. The popular radio host, who boasts 20 million daily listeners and has another book coming out this spring, Parenting by Proxy, is developing a syndicated program with Paramount Television. Unless the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) gets its way. Fresh from cajoling Walter Isaacson and Time into running a series of gay achievement items, media-savvy GLAAD is ready to dig into Dr. Laura for her anti-gay rhetoric. As an Orthodox Jew, Dr. Laura believes that homosexuality is contrary to God's law and on her show has referred to it as "deviant."
Statistically speaking, of course, Dr. Laura is correct. The human norm is heterosexuality. But that's not really what worries the folks at GLAAD, who have been rallying anti-Dr. Laura troops in the gay community. Joe Keenan, a writer and producer with the show Frasier (produced by Paramount Television) put it best when he said, "What gay person working for Paramount could be happy about this? We feel the way the Von Trapp children would feel if Dad decided to divorce Maria and marry Joan Crawford."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Paramount is showing signs of wobbliness. Executives have already agreed to meet with GLAAD to discuss Dr. Laura's show. At the February 14 meeting, GLAAD plans to request that she not be allowed to use "inflammatory" words like "deviance" and that she be required to present "balanced" views on homosexuality. In other words, they want to vet her show for political correctness.
This type of policing might seem outrageous, but not to GLAAD's entertainment director Scott Seomin. "We like to think we're influential," Seomin told the Washington Times.