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Dateline: Vieques, Puerto Rico

5/11/00 10:55 a.m.
Canada Takes on Dr. Laura
Is it the end of the good doctor in Canada?

By Neil Seeman, editorial writer for Canada’s National Post.

anada, the most reflexively left-wing country in the world, has declared war on Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the wildly popular radio host and indefatigable champion of Orthodox Jewish ethics.

In a rambling attack on both free speech and “homophobia,” the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has pilloried Dr. Laura for critical remarks about homosexuals she made on radio stations in Halifax and Toronto, forcing at least one major Canadian outlet to mouth public apologies on her behalf.

The CBSC, the national self-regulatory body that administers professional broadcast codes on behalf of Canada’s private broadcasters, ruled on Wednesday that Schlessinger’s consistent characterization of the sexual behavior of homosexuals as “abnormal,” “aberrant,” “deviant,” disordered,” “dysfunctional,” and a “biological error” were in violation of the human-rights provision of the voluntary Code of Ethics of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

Schlessinger’s statements about homosexuals on her California-based syndicated talk show - which are heard daily by more than 900,000 Canadians and 20 million people across the continent — the council decided, were “critical and discriminatory.” “In Canada, we respect freedom of speech but do not worship it,” the ruling stated.

Ian Grant, the managing director for TALK 640 in Toronto, said he would soon issue apologies on behalf of the show in light of the council’s ruling. “We’re very disappointed with the findings, but we’re going to adhere to them,” he said.

Bob Laine, the general manager of Chum Radio Network, which is the Canadian distributor of the Dr. Laura show, said 30 stations across all major markets now carry the program in Canada. But he would not comment on the ruling.

Under the council’s rules, if a broadcaster has breached any of the codes, it must make a public announcement during prime-time TV hours or peak radio listening hours.

“It’s sad, because it’s our most popular show — by far,” said Mr. Grant. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to cancel it. No, no, no. We’d never do that,” he added.

In the view of the council, the host’s terminology was “clearly pejorative.” Dr. Laura, it said, was “unhesitatingly critical, negative and unambiguous and her words are as critical and unrelenting as she can make them. In the end, she is utterly rigid about a fundamental issue which goes to the nature, the essence of gays and lesbians.” The CSBC noted that professional psychiatric associations felt Schlessinger’s views were more than two decades out of date.

The council also roundly dismissed Schlessinger’s argument that she “can ‘surgically’ separate the individual persons from their inherent characteristics so as to entitle her to make comments about the sexuality which have no effect on the person is fatuous and unsustainable.” The council concluded that, “[w]ith the power emanating from that microphone goes the responsibility for the consequences of the utterances. It is for such reasons, among others, that the respect of Canadian broadcast standards assumes such great societal importance.”

According to Hudson Janisch, an expert in administrative law at the University of Toronto, the council’s decision poses a prickly dilemma for those broadcasters who wish to run Dr. Laura’s daily radio show, since there are no avenues of appeal beyond the council itself.

Another problem, Prof. Janisch said, is that the council is effectively a “surrogate” for the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC), which assigns and renews all individual broadcast licences. “Although it is said that this is just voluntary self-regulation, it’s the sort of kind of voluntary self-regulation that says if you don’t do it, we’re going to come in and do it,’“ said Prof. Janisch.

But Ron Cohen, the national chairman of the CBSC, insisted that the CRTC maintains an arm’s-length relationship with the council. “The CRTC is certainly legally entitled to read them, but they don’t follow them blindly,” said Mr. Cohen.

The council, by virtue of its remit under the Broadcasting Act, has imposed sanctions on stations that refuse to heed its rulings. The most recent example occurred when it ordered a Winnipeg radio station, CJKR, to issue a public apology for sponsoring a contest offering $10,000 to any woman willing to who ride her bicycle naked down a busy city street.

Prof. Janisch said both the council and the CRTC were moving in the direction of tougher regulations for open-mike call-in shows, such as Schlessinger’s.

Schlessinger has risen to become the second most popular radio host in America, after Rush Limbaugh, mostly for her hard-nosed approach to ethics and morality. More than 20 million people across the continent listen daily to her frank advice on moral questions and read her myriad bestsellers — including How Could You Do That?!: The Abdication of Character, Courage, and Conscience and The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life. There is even a Dr. Laura board game.

Two years ago, she had a brush with unfavorable celebrity when an Internet site posted nude photographs of her taken two decades ago by an ex-boyfriend.

But more than anything else, Schlessinger has landed on a bed of nails for vituperative comments made toward the homosexual lifestyle, which in turn gave rise to yesterday’s ruling.

On some isolated complaints, the council sided with Schlessinger. For example, the council said that her critical comments about the behavior and sordid lifestyle of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual university student from Wyoming whose brutal murder in 1998 was assailed as a “hate crime” by several gay-rights groups, were justified in the name of spirited verbal jousting. “She is absolutely unequivocal that murder is the worst of all crimes and that there are no circumstances in which she or any conservative Christians would support it as a solution,” the council’s decision stated.

However, the council denounced as discriminatory Schlessinger’s frequent suggestions that “paedophilia is more common among members of the gay community than the heterosexual community” and that paedophilia was causally associated with homosexuality.

John Fisher, the executive director of EGALE, a national gay-rights lobby group, praised the council’s decision, saying “she’s being using the microphone simply as a platform for her personal prejudices.” With respect to the case of Matthew Shepard, Schlessinger “clearly engaged in a tactic of blaming the victim,” he added.

Alan Borovoy, general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the Council’s ruling was “the ideal way for a civilized society such as Canada to deal with this type of thing.” “As long as we’re not talking about state coercion, which doesn’t seem to be the case here, because private broadcasters can always opt out of the council, then that’s perfectly okay,” he said.

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