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IT'S BEGINNING to a look as though the only steadfast players left in the Bush Administration are Kemps. While Jack Kemp has been courageously urging the President back to the straight and narrow, the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Evan J. Kemp Jr., is fighting against an ill-advised effort to shut down a radio station. He has done so, moreover, with marked courage in the face of personal anguish.

In Los Angeles last July, KFI radio station aired two call-in shows concerning local news anchors Bree Walker Lampley and Jim Lampley. Mrs, Lampley, who suffers from a genetic condition in which the bones of her hands and feet are fused together, was pregnant at the time, and the talk show revolved around whether she should have children if there was a chance they would be born disabled. The vast majority of those who called in argued, often graphically, that Mrs. Lampley had no right to become pregnant.

Under something called the Personal Attack Rule, the Lampleys and some 29 disabled-rights organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission to revoke the station's license. The lawyer for the complainants even called Mr. Kemp to get him to sign on as well: after all, the EEOC chairman suffers from a neuro-muscular disease that confines him to a wheelchair, and he notes that his own family says they would have aborted him had they known. Though "appalled and sickened" by the broadcast contents, Mr. Kemp took a stand against the effort to censor the station, arguing in a personal statement that the only way to "save others like me" is to "take the discussion away from the doctors, ethics specialists, and attorneys and put it out on the streets." Mr. Kemp also made his case in a letter to FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes, thus raising the ante. He is supported by the conservative Institute for Justice, which has filed an objection claiming that the FCC's review of the material is unconstitutional.

Naturally this has not made Mr. Kemp popular among disabled-activist groups, or even with the FCC, which now finds its whole regulation under challenge. In the best possible world, no one would say the sort of things they did on KFDI and FCC regulations would not be used to censor offensive speech. But in the world we have, we need more appointees like Evan Kemp who realize that the principle of toleration is most required when it protects views we find hateful and offensive.