Lou Sheldon has died

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George Takei mentioned this

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Lou Sheldon, one of the leading homophobes of the past few decades, has died at age 85.

Sheldon died Friday in Southern California, his son-in-law James Lafferty told The Orange County Register. Lafferty said the cause of death was “a long-standing condition” but did not elaborate.

Sheldon, originally a Presbyterian minister and later an Anglican clergyman, founded the Traditional Values Coalition in 1980 “to spread a ‘moral code and behavior based upon the Old and New Testaments’ and to warn Americans of the rising ‘gay threat,’” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a progressive watchdog organization that designated the coalition a hate group.

“Sheldon, a protégé of Christian Right evangelist Pat Robertson, launched TVC in Anaheim, California, before moving its headquarters to Washington, D.C.,” the SPLC notes. “His anti-LGBT rhetoric — calling homosexuality a ‘deathstyle;’ claiming child molestation is the real ‘homosexual agenda;’ suggesting AIDS victims should be forced into leper-like colonies — pushed TVC to the forefront of the battle against equal rights in the 1990s.”

I hope you’ll all forgive me if I do not prostrate myself with grief over this. 

[Howl]

Good riddance, but it sounds as though the son followed in his father's footsteps.