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Dr. Laura
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April 22nd, 2010Current Affairs, Entertainment, Humor
This has apparently been circulating around the Internet for several years; however, I just read it for the first time, today, and thought it was entertaining enough to pass along.
(First, some background:Laura Catherine Schlessinger (“Dr. Laura”) (born January 16, 1947) is an American talk radio host, socially conservative commentator and author. Her call-in radio program occasionally features short monologues on social and political topics, but is mostly made up of her responses to callers’ requests for personal advice.
Schlessinger’s answers have been variously characterized as direct, wise, to-the-point, abrupt and cruel. Her website says that her show “preaches, teaches, and nags about morals, values and ethics.”
Previously, Schlessinger combined a local radio career with a private practice as a marriage and family counselor, but since going national she has concentrated her efforts on the daily syndicated The Dr. Laura Program, and on authoring self-help books. A television talk show was launched in 2000, but it was short-lived. The Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, and The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands are among her bestselling works.
It has always been my opinion that Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a sanctimonious, self-righteous, hypocritical, bitter woman. More about Dr. Laura, later in this post).
Anyway, to get back to my story . . . During her radio show, Dr Laura said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.
The following is purportedly an open letter to Dr. Laura which was posted on the Internet. Legitimate or not, I think it’s pretty funny:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law.
I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.
When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination . . . End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness – Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I’m confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan,
James M. Kauffman
Ed.D. Professor Emeritus
Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education
University of VirginiaThis is what Snopes.com says about the Dr. Laura/letter response story:
We first ran into this letter in the online world in May 2000, just after the state of Vermont permitted homosexual couples to contract “civil unions,” an official recognition that imparted to same-sex partners the legal benefits of marriage, such as the right to be regarded by hospitals as their partners’ next of kin, to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners, and to file joint tax returns. This “everything that is marriage but the name” decision pleased some and angered others, resulting in many heated opinions about same-sex unions in specific, and homosexuality in general, to be bruited in countless public forums.
Thanks to her oft-aired opinion that homosexuals are a “mistake of nature,” radio’s Dr. Laura Schlessinger became one of the targets of those of pro-gay sympathies looking for someone to shake a finger at.Dr. Schlessinger has attracted both adherents and detractors during her years of public life. Through her radio show, she dispenses advice to callers, usually from a conservative point of view. She was an Orthodox Jew at the time the letter quoted above was written (but she announced her renunciation of that faith on her show in July 2003) and often draws upon the Bible or religious teachings for guidance. She is blunt and forthright in her replies, viewing most situations as inherently black or white, right or wrong.
Laura Schlessinger is neither a medical doctor nor accredited in a discipline one would traditionally look to for the generation of expertise in moral, societal, or spiritual matters (such as divinity, psychology, or sociology). She earned her doctorate in physiology from Columbia University and practiced as a licensed marriage, family, and child counselor for more than a decade (although her California Marriage Family and Child Counseling license has been inactive for several years).
In 1998 nude photos of Laura Schlessinger were displayed on the Internet. During the commotion over those pictures, their source was revealed to be veteran Los Angeles radio broadcaster Bill Ballance, a man who was pivotal in getting Schlessinger her start in radio. Ballance claimed he photographed her in 1978, while the pair of them were having an affair during Schlessinger’s first marriage.
Some see Schlessinger’s use of “Doctor” as misleading and view her current stance on the sanctity of marriage and the wrongness of adultery as hypocrisy in light of her decades-earlier affair. Others believe the title of “Doctor” should not be restricted only to those in the medical field and hold that people can change over time, even to the point of full repudiation of previous behaviors and beliefs.
Dr. Laura is as controversial as she is popular, so she attracts both bouquets and brickbats whenever topics she is known to harbor strong opinions about become part of the day’s news. Thus, those looking for someone to crow at over Vermont’s recognition of same-sex unions would have quickly thought of Dr. Laura.
The “letter” to Dr. Laura may or may not have actually been sent to her, but in any case it is best read as an essay offering a counter to the “homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so” argument. Though it purports to be addressed to just one person (Dr. Laura), it is clearly meant for a general audience. The authorship of the letter is still a bit of a mystery, although the name “Kent Ashcraft” (or “J. Kent Ashcraft”) keeps coming up.
Confusing the issue further, because the letter has been circulated as widely as it has in e-mail, in some versions the signature blocks of forwarders have come to be part of the mailing, leading those who receive those versions farther down the line to assume those people were the writers of the piece. Then there’s the case of Jim Kauffman; his signature was deliberately appended by someone without his knowledge, causing him to receive many a phone call and e-mail from those who have taken him for essay’s author.
In August 2003 a journalist for the Halifax Daily News presented the Dr. Laura letter” as her own writing. For presenting the piece in her column as her own by signing it “Yours truly, Jane,” reporter Jane Kansas was fired from that publication. (Her version also changed “Dear Dr. Laura” to “Dear Holy Father” plus added some local references.)
The question of authorship aside, this May 2000 piece struck a note with many people, and by June and July of that year it had made its way into a number of newspapers, including the Knoxville News-Sentinel (7 June), Seattle Weekly (8 June), OC Weekly (9 June), The [Syracuse] Post-Standard (11 June), [Madison] Capital Times (13 July), and the Modesto Bee (22 July). Most often the letter was acknowledged as an interesting item gleaned from the Internet, but in a few cases the readers who sent it to newspapers presented it as their own words, which serves to make the question of who actually wrote it even harder to answer.
The key to this essay is its premise, not the pedantic details of it of how it is defended. Simply put, the letter points out a logical flaw in the “homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so” argument: if homosexuality is wrong because it goes against God’s law as outlined in the Bible, why aren’t any number of activities now viewed as innocuous but once regarded as unacceptable also offenses against God’s law? How can one part of Leviticus be deemed as etched in stone when other parts have been discarded as archaic?
The essay completes with the sarcastic rejoinder, “Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.” While this is presented as a rebuke meant for just one, it is a general reminder that many belief systems pick and choose their way through Biblical teachings in determining what is right and what is wrong, with those assessments changing over time even within sects that pride themselves on strict adherence to the Good Book.
In early October 2000, Dr. Schlessinger, ran a full-page ad in Variety offering an apology for what she called “poorly chosen” words about homosexuality. She had previously referred to gays as “biological errors” and “deviants,” as exemplified by her remarks of 8 December 1998:
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.
October 2000 was not Dr. Laura’s month. A few weeks after she issued her apology, a version of the “Letter to Dr. Laura” was incorporated into the 18 October episode of the political television drama The West Wing. In “The Midterms”, President Bartlet used his own detailed knowledge of the Bible to make a Schlessinger-esque character named Jenna Jacobs look ridiculous.
Just as the Internet piece gave the West Wing writers fodder for a memorable scene, so did the exposure on a popular television show boost the online circulation of the “Letter to Dr. Laura”. Similarly, the 2004 brouhaha over gay marriage sparked a renewal of this e-missive, causing it to once again be flung from inbox to inbox.
In the wake of President George W. Bush’s election to a second term, in the fall of 2004 the piece was circulated yet again, this time addressed “Dear President Bush” rather than “Dear Dr. Laura.” Following the “Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging” close of the Dr. Laura letter, the updated version addressed to the President continued “It must be really great to be on such close terms with God and his son, even better than you and your own Dad, eh?”I guess the point is that whomever wrote the purported letter and whom ever it was directed to is really irrelevant. The real story is the brilliant sarcastic content of the letter.However, the letter story gives me an opportunity to “bash” Dr. Laura.Here’s what I discovered about the woman on Wikipedia:In the mid-1970s while working in the labs at USC, she met Lewis G. Bishop, a professor of neuro physiology who was married and the father of three children. According to divorce filings, Schlessinger and Bishop began an affair. Bishop left his wife and moved in with Schlessinger. They lived together as an unmarried couple for approximately nine years, and Schlessinger tried to get pregnant after reversing an earlier tubal ligation and suffering an ectopic pregnancy. Bishop and Schlessinger married in early 1985 with Schlessinger announcing at the wedding that she was pregnant. Schlessinger bore their only child, Deryk Schlessinger, in November 1985, when she was 38. Her son enrolled in Hillsdale College in the fall of 2002; he subsequently left college and joined the United States Army under its 18x Special Forces contract program.
Schlessinger was estranged from her sister for many years, and had not spoken to her mother for 18 to 20 years before her death in 2002. Schelssinger’s mother’s body was found in her Beverly Hills condo approximately two months after she died from heart disease. In 2006, Schlessinger wrote that she had been attacked in a “vulgar, inhumane manner by media types” because of the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death, and that false allegations had been made that she was unfit to dispense family values advice. She explained that she had not mourned the deaths of either of her parents because she had no emotional bond to them. She described her father as “petty, insensitive, mean, thoughtless, demeaning and downright unloving”. Her mother, she said, had “pathological pride”, “was never grateful and would always find something to criticize,” and “constantly expressed disdain for men, sex and love”. She credited her father with being charming, with giving her the drive to succeed, and said her mother was beautiful as a young woman. She said her mother was the one who broke off their relationship.
Schlessinger had not been a believer in religion until she and her son began practicing Conservative Judaism in 1996. In 1998, Schlessinger, Bishop, and their son converted to Orthodox Judaism, and began instruction under Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka of Ottawa, Ontario. During this time, Schlessinger sometimes used Jewish law and examples to resolve the moral dilemmas of her callers. She occasionally clarified ethical and moral issues with her local Orthodox Rabbi Moshe D. Bryski, before mentioning them on the air. She was embraced by many in the politically-conservative segment of Orthodox Judaism for bringing more awareness of Orthodoxy to her radio show. Some of her expressed views were explicitly religious, and are referenced her 1999 book The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life. Although her other books have stressed the importance of morality, they are more secular in nature.
In July 2003, Schlessinger announced on her show that she was no longer an Orthodox Jew. In a series of monologues following that announcement, she explained that she did not feel a connection with God, and felt frustrated by the effort she had put into following the religion. Her religious approach on the show lessened substantially after this announcement. In December 2006, she stated that she was outraged that a Rabbi was demanding that a menorah be put in the Seattle International airport adjacent to a Christian holiday display. Schlessinger then said that she would be putting a Christmas tree up in her own house.What in the world does this religiously-confused adulteress from an extremely dysfunctional family think makes her qualified to judge others, or dispense advice about morality, relationships, religion, or anything else?One Web site believes that Dr. Laura should win the “Rush Limbaugh Award For Excellence In Conservative Hypocrisy”, saying:[W]hat Dr. Laura says on her radio show; the “advice” she gives to the many people who come to her for help seems to heavily conflict with the way Dr. Laura has lived and continues to live her life. This has led me to conclude that Dr. Laura has another personality, who for the purposes of this bit we shall name “Ms. Schlessinger”. Consider the evidence…
Exhibit A: Family Values
Dr. Laura says… that family is the most important thing. She is big on emphasizing the commandment about “Honor thy Mother and Father” and the importance of families to women who do thing such as complain about overbearing mothers and mothers-in-law or unattentive boyfriends and husbands.
But Ms. Schlessinger …
A.) has not spoken to her mother since the late 80′s.
B.) “does not see much” of her younger sister (to quote her Husband).
C.) hired her mother as a secretary. She quit after Laura told her to “learn how to type”.
D.) has enocuraged her husband to forget his family… “My husband HAD a prior family. And I figured I went through 12 hours of labor and a C-section. I figured, I’m going to name this thing anything I want, and I said, ‘Lew, do you have any problem with the last name Schlessinger? ‘ He said, ‘No.’”
E.) speaks out against birth control in any form, and yet has had her tubes tied.
F.) shows an open disrespect for women who choose to have children AND jobs. And yet she is herself a working mother.
Exhibit B: The Sanctity of Marriage
Dr. Laura says… you should save yourself for marriage, stay married once you are married and that adultery is just plain wrong and that women who sleep around are “sluts”.
But Ms. Schlessinger …
A.) has admitted to having sex before marriage in college.
B.) is herself divorced, despite enocuraging many disatisfied wives to stand by their men, no matter what. (1)
C.) had an affair with another man while she was married.
D.) had an affair with her current husband while he was with his previous wife.
Exhibit C: The Matter of Religion
Dr. Laura says… that differing faith marriages are wrong and that a person should live by the Ten Commandments.But Ms. Schlessinger …
A.) is married to a man who isn’t Jewish.
B.) has broken the commandment about “bearing false witness” in regard to the nude photos of her. On 10/29/98 she issued a statement through her lawyer saying that the photos are fake. They couldn’t exist because none were ever taken. She later admitted that they were real.
Exhibit D: Ethical Conduct and Whining
Dr. Laura says… honesty is important. She also tells people who ask her for help to stop whining.But Ms. Schlessinger …
A.) lied about the nude pictures of her.
B.) promotes her show as if she were qualified to give statments upon mental health. The truth is, Ms. Schlessinger’s doctorate is in physiology. Not psychology or psychiatry. Physiology. About the only thing Dr. Laura is officially qualified to do is teach Physical Education in Jr. High.
C.) took $30,000 for a speaking engagement, where she treated her hosts rudely and complained non-stop about everything possible.In summary, I have a strong dislike for sanctimonious, self-righteous, “holier-than-thou” hypocrites and I savor the schadenfreude I feel when such a person is exposed.
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Here's a response to the open letter to Laura from a Jewish perspective: http://universaljudaism.hubpages.com/hub/response-open-letter-dr-laura
There are many ways to mock and defame those people who believe in God and the Bible. One very common way is such a kind of in which people mix up all commands of the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. In this writing, I bring forth that how mockers distort, take things out of the context and mix up order of the Old and New Covenant.
Dr. Laura Schlesinger said on her radio show 2004 that she as an observant Orthodox Jew thinks that homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. Someone posted on the Internet an open letter to Dr. Laura.
In this writing, I'm going to deal with arguments of an open letter. My answers are according to the order of the New Covenant, and I rectify few misunderstandings and misrepresented things.
Answers and the whole article is here: http://koti.phnet.fi/petripaavola/answeringtomockersoftheBible.html
The Bible says a lot of things. While it is made clear that the Lord hates homos, in 2 Kings 2:23 He smites 42 kids for making fun of a bald guy. Praise Him for Jason Alexander may be the chosen one!
I suspect Dr. Laura changed her religion after mulling various things over after 9/11/01. Back then, she began researching the One World Order agenda, noticed patterns, made some decisions and changed gears.
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