I can not figure out Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

For those of you who do not know her or have not heard of her she is the outspoken radio host who dispenses her advise to an estimated 5 million listners.

The other day she was talking to Mark, a thirty-year old alcoholic gay man who has aids. Instead of berating the ‘sinner’, she was civil and a bit sympathetic to the hapless man. I could not believe she was the same self-righteous Dr. Laura who would not cut a millimeter worth of slack to working moms, gays, lesbians or anyone who does not subscribe to her gospel of every day living.

By definition self-righteous people do not change their minds or their stripes. So why this new found compassion? I do not know for certain butit might have something to do with the controversy that her forthcoming television show on CBS has created. According to newspaper reports many advertisers, including Proctor and Gamble, Geico Insurance, Xerox and Toys R Us have pulled out their support. The show will, however, debut on September 11 as planned.

Why does this 53-year old, sharp-tongued diva of daytime radio invoke such passionate response in people? Because while preaching a gospel of intolerance, she berates, cajoles and shames her callers with the gentleness of a sledgehammer. She calls it as she sees it. The trouble is she looks at things through the myopic glasses of a religious zealot.

While the society is becoming more tolerant and accepting of gays and lesbians she continues to belittle them. She labels them as biological errors, dysfunctional and deviant. Her pronouncements fly in the face of science and biology. Even if attraction for the same sex is a biologic error, gays had no choice in the matter. If 10%, the often quoted estimate of homosexual tendency in general population, is accepted then we must also accept that the nature has been ‘erring’ a great deal.

When Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation responded to her venomous uttering, she was devastated. She said she cried more times than she would like to admit. I am sure she has caused enough pain to so many people that her own pain is trivial by comparison. And hers is mostly a self-afflicted pain.

For three hours every week day Schlessinger dispenses her sound-bite size advise to the confused multitude who call in to seek her advise on such monumental problems as who to invite for a family get together, how to deal with step children or how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. In a terse one-sided conversation she tells them to get a life and live it as God (her god) had intended them to live. In her black and white view of life there is no discussion, no argument, no doubts and definitely no room for mitigating circumstances. Dare to question her and she gets testy and belligerent.

Considering her past it certainly takes guts to do what she does. After all not many people have the chutzpah to condemn others for indiscretions that she herself has been guilty of. She has, by her own admission, indulged in pre-marital sex and has, gasp, posed nude for the camera. Her revealing pictures are posted on the Internet. While shecondemns working mothers, she herself is one.

Her qualifications are also in question. The doctor in Dr. Laura comes from a doctorate in physiology. It probably qualifies her to teach humanphysiology or biology. But to preach and psychoanalyze under cover of anunrelated doctorate is not only dangerous, it is fraudulent.

One wonders about her staying power and the staying power of other purveyors of intolerance on radio and television. From Rush Limbaugh to Howard Stern to Laura Schlessinger the airways are awash with intolerance and bigotry. Such shows always attract the curious, the insecure and the mindless. More outrageous the show, better the ratings.

These are the later day version of the freak shows of the past. Dr. Laura claims to be ‘the lone voice standing out there for Judeo-Christian principles’. Apparently compassion, understanding and acceptance of others are not part of her abridged and condensed scripture.

Remember the compassion in her voice that I noticed on that one occasion when she was talking to a gay man with AIDS? Well, it was short lived.

Of late she has been her usual self.