With 18 million listeners a week on 452 stations, Laura Schlessinger is the most successful female talk-radio host in the country today. This fall the sharp-tongued psychotherapist is scheduled to bring her views to television with the syndicated talk show Dr. Laura. But as its Sept. 11 premier date nears, she has been the target of a campaign by gay activists who are pressuring Paramount Domestic Television to pull the plug because of what they contend are her slurs against homosexuals. Procter & Gamble has backed out as a sponsor. In an exclusive interview with TIME, Schlessinger, 53, an Orthodox Jew, discusses the controversy as well as her new book, Parenthood by Proxy (HarperCollins, $24), and what she sees as a moral decline. --By Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles
TIME: What do you think you're tapping into out there that's fueling your show's growth and your success?
A: A basic moral intuition about what's right and wrong. What I provide for people is argument and support. I cannot tell you how many women have said my pounding on about how the first priority in their lives ought to be the child has helped them. That pounding was met by some negativity at first, but now people say their lives are just elevated by doing what seems so simple but is counter to what's going on in society.
TIME: So we're going to hell in a handbasket, and people want to turn things around?
A: They're struggling, and I help with the struggle because I preach, I teach--and boy, do I nag. I'm relentless about it. Everybody at home can make a decision to do or not do anything, but I nag. I have no power other than nagging.
TIME: But what qualifies you to be a moral authority?
A: I am just conveying my understanding of the deeply felt religious perspectives that are timeless. I struggle to put those in a context that makes sense for callers. What the brilliant rabbis have done is take certain laws from the Bible and values of responsibility and honor and apply them to modern ideas. I struggle to do the same--understand the religious Scriptures and apply them to the dilemmas we have today.
TIME: Can you set the record straight and explain your comments about homosexuals as "deviants"?
A: I never called homosexual human beings deviants. I have pointed out that homosexual behavior deviates from the norm of heterosexuality and is forbidden by Scriptures. That is basically the context... Even now I get hundreds of letters a week from gays and lesbians who realize the way I'm being presented is nowhere near the truth. I stand behind basic civil rights--where someone is able to live, and work at his job--and always have. The only place where there is a divergence is the issue that I consider sacred: marriage and family structure around children.
TIME: A homosexual couple can't be as good parents as a heterosexual couple can?