Anyone who was hoping to hear Dr. Laura speak in the Bay Area this winter will have to tune into her radio show.
Laura Schlessinger won’t be speaking at the International Conference on Jewish Medical Ethics in Burlingame in February.
The controversial radio personality, an Orthodox Jew, was uninvited from the conference by Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, dean of the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco.
Reportedly, Lipner withdrew the invitation because of all the controversy surrounding Schlessinger’s commentary that homosexuality is a “biological error” and “deviant.”
The international conference, which looks at today’s hot topics in medical ethics, is 11 years old.
Lipner refused comment on the decision, and Schlessinger did not return phone calls after contact was made with her publicist.
John Aravosis of Washington, who launched the anti-Schlessinger Web site, www.stopdrlaura.com, six months ago, hopes the rescindment will “water down her Jewish defense.”
“Dr. Laura has been defending her anti-gay rhetoric by claiming she’s a doctor and a Jew — using her degree and her faith,” he said. “What we’re finding out is that even those who share her faith are refuting her ideology.”
The Web site currently displays a March 24 letter written by the Anti-Defamation League’s director of civil rights to Schlessinger, addressing her anti-gay views.
“We are concerned that others might use such statements to justify acts of violence or discriminate against gays and lesbians,” says the letter by Elizabeth Coleman.
“There are a string of mainstream Jewish organizations saying this has gone too far,” said Aravosis. “This rhetoric is not Jewish.”