Melder's Musings

George Weber was killed by a teenage boy he invited into his home for "rough sex." (Associated Press Photo from New York Daily News website)

Usually, when a conservative is caught up in a gay sex scandal, he lives to deny it. That's not the case for deceased ABC News Radio anchor George Weber.

The self-described "moderate conservative" was murdered last Friday by a teenage male prostitute that he arranged to meet using the Internet. A report by the New York Daily News offers details about the encounter that led to Weber's murder and the subsequent arrest of the underage suspect.

To be fair, there is no evidence that Weber was a closeted homosexual or that he actively sought to discriminate against his fellow homosexuals a la Larry Craig. In fact, Weber admitted to being "embarrassed about" how he "taunted them [gays] on the air" during his college radio days.

Weber did list Senator John Kerry "siding with those who support gay marriages" among "stuff that bugs him" on a web page still maintained by radio station WABC. According to the Daily News report, "Weber, 47, had been laid off from WABC, where he worked for a decade. He freelanced for ABC's national radio network and wrote a blog."

Supporting gay marriages was apparently undesirable in Weber's opinion, but paying to have gay sex with teenage boys was just fine. Unfortunately, gay marriage wasn't his only complaint against the GLBT community.

Weber, in one blog post, blamed gay people for gentrification and the disappearance of certain "dive bars" in New York City. In another blog post, he used anonymous police sources to bolster his claim that a Manhattan club with a particularly ethnic clientele is responsible for crime in the surrounding streets, including "fights, stabbings, robberies, public drinking and general rowdiness."

In addition to being critical of a club patronized by gay men of certain ethnic groups, Weber also used his blog to disparage the Internet personal ads of young gay men he linked to those same ethnic groups. He posted examples of what he called "ghetto speak" and a "bastardized version of the English language."

Weber's use of gay men's Internet postings wasn't restricted to his social commentary. He also used them as a source of sexual gratification. According to the Daily News report, Weber and his "Satan-loving sadomasochist...hustler...agreed to a drug-fueled rough sex romp for $60."

"He and Weber met online sometime last week and had arranged to meet," New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Daily News. "There was going to be an exchange of money."

Weber's story is one that has received almost no attention in the media. Even among websites that would normally use such a story as the basis for commentary, little has been said. I don't understand the silence. Like so many prominent conservatives before him, Weber has been exposed as someone who partook in illegal activities with a person that he would have publicly scorned. His being a reporter for a major news outlet should be additional fodder for some kind of public reaction. Perhaps, though, we've become so used to this sort of thing from outspoken conservatives that it's not even worth pointing out anymore.