Dr. Laura

Re “Schlessinger Apologizes for Gay Comments,” March 11: Conservative commentators who defend Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s right to express her anti-gay views also criticize perceived enemies of free speech on the left who want to suppress her scheduled fall television show. These self-proclaimed defenders of free speech in all probability also agree with her on the moral status of homosexuality.

However, it is also a right and indeed an obligation to challenge and even suppress ideas known to lead to murderous violence, such as racial intolerance, anti-Semitism and yes, homophobia. How are Holocaust deniers handled in Europe? Asking any network to not air an individual who promotes homophobia hardly constitutes the feared left-wing censorship as embodied by the school of political correctness, whose main crime has been to insist that subtle forms of contempt and intolerance be expunged from public discourse.

I’ll continue to enjoy Dr. Laura’s radio show. She’s an entertaining and skilled counselor. That she’s as homophobic as the rest of the Judeo-Christian folk doesn’t change that.

PAUL WEINGARTEN

Irvine

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I would like to point out that nowhere did Schlessinger apologize for making the slanderous and inaccurate statements she’s been making about gay and lesbian American citizens. She only apologized if her statements “have hurt anyone.” I know how that works. When you are forced to make an apology for something you’re not apologetic for, you sidestep the real issue and apologize for something else and make it sound like you’re apologizing for the offense. We’ll see if Laura really means it and stops with the hateful attacks and malicious lies about homosexuals.

KEN SCOTT

Honolulu