By Judy Mann

Wednesday, March 1, 2000; Page C15

Let's venture down memory lane to the wonderful world of high school, when everybody's favorite subject was picking on people who were "different." Ridicule was a high art form; so was snickering behind kids' backs. Isolating people who were different was another cruel peer punishment. You didn't complain to school authorities, because they didn't care.

In my high school, teenagers who were different were the ones who wore the "wrong" shoes, who were smart, who were foreigners or had serious acne. Today, the standards have changed. Young people are being labeled "different" for a reason we hadn't even heard of back then: sexual preference. As heterosexual young people have become sexually active earlier, homosexual youngsters have been asserting their sexual identity at earlier ages as well. They are paying a steep price.

In Massachusetts, a survey found that 97 percent of high school students heard homophobic remarks regularly from their peers and that 53 percent said they heard them from school staff members. Another study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the state Education Department found gay students are four times as likely as heterosexual children to be threatened with a weapon at school. The same study found gay youngsters are three to seven times as likely to attempt suicide.

While gay-bashing is flourishing, it is a tribute to the tolerance and good sense of many youngsters that some 600 gay-straight alliance clubs have sprung up in high schools and middle schools across the country, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Some schools have encouraged them, understanding the value of support groups for gay students and the children of gay parents, and the value of those clubs in teaching tolerance. But predictably, in Orange County, Calif., the school district is trying to ban such a club.

Homophobia's impact on gay children is a major concern to such organizations as the Child Welfare League of America and the National Mental Health Association, as well as numerous medical, civil rights and religious organizations. They believe one of the people causing damage to these children is Laura Schlessinger, the blowhard, right-wing talk show host who has parlayed a doctorate in physiology and a license in counseling into a multimedia Guardianship of the Nation's Morals. She has the dubious distinction of surpassing Rush Limbaugh to become the premiere entertainment form for some 20 million Americans who listen to talk radio. A convert to Judaism five years ago, she frequently hijacks religious tenets and invents fanciful medical information to bolster her harangues.

She has become so openly anti-gay that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation began posting transcripts of her programs on its Web site (www.glaad.org). Here are some samples:

"If you're gay or lesbian, it's a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex." From the same show: "Nobody said they were 'bad people' or incompetent or not intelligent or not good citizens. They just said the sexual behavior is deviant, and we don't want it in schools, and we don't want it to be recognized on the same level as heterosexuality."

Or this, on lesbian parents: "It's not normal. It's not in the best interest of children. This is a travesty that these two lesbians were given two little children, intentionally depriving them of a father. It's despicable. It's unhealthy. The psychological literature backs up what I'm saying."

Schlessinger has also become a loud voice in the "reparative therapy" movement, which holds that homosexuality can be "cured." How you cure a "biological error" is beyond me, but surely Radio's Queen of Mean would have an answer. "Willpower, stupid."

Led by the San Francisco-based Horizons Foundation, more than 180 organizations and individuals, including some of the country's most prominent scholars, psychiatrists, pediatricians, rabbis and ministers, have written Schlessinger a letter expressing concern that her statements are contributing to fear and hatred of gay people. "We are especially concerned that your commentaries are teaching otherwise happy and healthy young people to hate themselves," they write.

They cite peer-reviewed studies that show heterosexual men pose a greater risk to children than do homosexuals, contrary to one of her assertions. They point out that the idea that homosexuality is an illness has been thoroughly repudiated.

"Having an adult reinforce some of the harassment and bullying these kids get does nothing but exacerbate the dilemma they find themselves in," said Shay Bilchik, executive director of the Child Welfare League. The letter, he said, was an attempt to make Schlessinger aware that children are being harmed by rhetoric that labels them as deviants who need to be cured. "If we fail to respond to that, our silence is abandoning those kids."

The letter takes the high road and corrects her many mistakes with scholarly citations. It points out that with her huge following, she could "help kids by speaking out against homophobia and anti-gay violence."

But the harsh reality of the situation is that she spews venom about homosexuals that would have knocked a radio personality off the air in five minutes if he had applied it to African Americans. Imagine what would happen if one of the shock jocks declared that being black was a "biological error." He wouldn't even get the Greaseman's shot at resurrecting his career on a 6,000-watt station in the Virgin Islands.

Sadly, homophobia has not risen to the level of racism and sexism in our cultural taboos. And as it is with any group that is "different," it is the children who suffer the most.