Paul Weyrich is dead

Yet another Republican hatemonger has died. He will not be missed.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan was quoted as saying that Weyrich "was instrumental in the development of conservative thought" in the US. That’s an understatement: He was one of three founders of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” (which, as we all know, was neither), he helped form the “Christian” Coalition and was the first president of the Heritage Foundation. When he died, he was head of the hard-right Free Congress Foundation.

Weyrich was long an enemy of gay people, and not just by promoting the political involvement of the far-right christianists who eventually took over the Republican Party. On a TV preacher’s show, he proclaimed that all gay men are child predators. More recently, he promoted another right wing homophobic stereotype when he wrote that President Obama will "emasculate the military" when he repeals the infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” anti-gay military policy. He also claimed that Obama will force Roman Catholic doctors to perform abortions.

Weyrich was wrong about pretty much everything imaginable. That’s okay, liberty gives us the freedom to be wrong. But he tried to impose his beliefs on everyone and to suppress the liberty and freedoms of people he disagreed with. That’s not okay.

So, another hatemonger is dead. No one in the centre, let alone the left, will be mourning this death.