Just because she opposes children accessing pornography doesn't quite mean Dr. Laura Schlessinger favors silencing anyone - her critics or herself. But she's hammering back at a library association she says tried to get her pulled off the air while defending their assault as "standing up for free speech."
The popular and controversial radio psychologist has hammered back at critics she says are trying actively to silence her for no good reason other than she is not "a liberal", in a column which appeared on, among others, the Jewish World Review's Web site.
"Beware of the folks who wave the banner of free speech," she writes. "They generally mean it only for themselves."
Schlessinger - who recently feuded with Hustler publisher Larry Flynt over photographs of her taken years before she became famous - singled out what she called the "targeting me for radio extinction" by "some members" of the American Library Association, over her position favoring blocking materials to keep children from accessing Internet pornography. She says the ALA has pressured sponsors of her radio show to withdraw support and force her off the air.
"It stands by its so-called Bill of Rights, which opposes limiting access to any and all material, based upon, among other things, age," she writes. "This means that the ALA, along with the ACLU, fights against parental, community and governmental pressure to put filters on computers used by children to protect them from accessing the No. 1 Internet business -- pornography. The ALA claims that it is a child's right to access this information."
Schlessinger says one ALA librarian told one of her sponsors she, Schlessinger, "was trying to get librarians fired…suggesting on-air that communities withdraw funding for libraries without filters." Schlessinger says she never suggested that, but did suggest parents learn their libraries' policies and act to guarantee their children were protected from Net porn in the libraries.
"(My sponsor) asked her why she was against filters. She said because she was for free speech," Schlessinger continued. "My sponsor asked her how shutting me down because I simply had an opposing viewpoint would further the cause of free speech in the United States of America. Evidently, she had no response."
"Parents and educators should be the ones to guide children in the development of values, beliefs and their experience of the world - whether that world is on the street or on a screen," says Jerry Berman, president of the Internet Education Foundation which managed a Web site project with the ALA involving guiding parents to helping their children enjoy the online experience.
Berman's remarks, though not drawn explicitly by the issue, could apply to the imbroglio between Schlessinger's stand on Net filtering and the ALA's position. "When children use the Internet in school or in a library, their experiences will be different than when they are at home," Berman continues, in comments appearing on ALA's own Web site. "Libraries and schools may have different rules for Internet use than your family, because they must serve the needs of diverse children and families."
Schlessinger also tweaked some militant homosexual groups for trying similar sponsor harassment tactics.
"Mind you -- I have never advocated hate or hostility toward homosexuals on or off my program," she writes. "In fact, homosexuals often call my program with their life struggles and write me of their disgust with the homosexual activists' behaviors and agenda."
But she says she supports parents who call her with "the pain and confusion" of being forced "by family members and much of society" to accept homosexuality as "normal and morally or legally equivalent to heterosexuality."
