Years ago, I used to listen to Dr. Laura regularly on my car radio while I drove to work, until my local talk-radio station dropped her from its schedule.

Of course her opinions sometimes made me want to puke, but—I don't know, maybe I have a masochistic streak.

Once in a while she would say something that made me think. For instance, she once said something like this to a drug addict who was protesting her own inability to kick the habit (And, note, I am paraphrasing from memory, and maybe even embellishing with my own thoughts and rhetoric—I can no longer tell the difference!):

I have no doubt that an addict who goes through withdrawal experiences physical pain. In that sense, it's a physical problem. But if you aren't willing to put yourself through that pain in order to beat your addiction, then you have a moral problem.

People choose to endure pain all the time. What about the person who donates a kidney to save a life? Do you think they don't experience pain? They experience lots of pain, yet they do it willingly, because they know it serves a higher purpose. You can do that, too.

If you go through life avoiding pain at all costs, you simply aren't a moral person.

Thus she demolished the argument "Addiction isn't a moral problem; it's a medical problem." I now accept the idea that something can be a medical (or whatever) problem and a moral problem at the same time. The two categories aren't mutually exclusive. Of course, that doesn't mean I accept Dr. Laura's moral judgments any more than I did before. I simply feel freer to make my own moral judgments!

*

I was intrigued to hear that Dr. Laura had changed some of her more strident views, so I looked at the link on "Homosexuality" given above. The first thing I notice is that she puts it under the heading "Hate Mail" and she starts off whining about the awful things people have said about her.

She hasn't changed all that much.