William Edwin Dannemeyer (September 22, 1929 – July 9, 2019) was a conservative American politician, activist, and author, known for his opposition to LGBT rights.

[1][2] He served seven terms as U.S. Representative from the 39th Congressional District of California from 1979 to 1993, during which time he, along with friend and fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan, came to personify Orange County conservatism.

[4] After leaving office, Dannemeyer expressed extreme antisemitic views, including a claim that Jews were guilty of a plot to legalize the murder of American Christians, as part of a larger conspiracy to establish a New World Order.

In 1968, he appeared on a television show hosted by fellow future Congressman Bob Dornan to announce that he was leaving the Democratic Party to become a Republican.

He accumulated a strongly conservative record on the Budget, Judiciary, and Energy and Commerce Committees, supporting legislation to suppress illegal immigration,[9] restrict telephone sex lines, and criminalize flag desecration.

He attempted to block federal funding of evolution-related exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution in 1982, and pushed for easing the separation of church and state.

On fiscal issues, he advocated budget cuts for social programs, renegotiation of the national debt, tax reduction, and deregulation.

In 1989, he was one of the successful House managers in the impeachment trial of then-Judge Walter Nixon for committing perjury in front of a grand jury.

[10] Dannemeyer was an outspoken critic of LGBT rights, and on June 29, 1989, read a graphic description of gay sex into the Congressional Record titled "What Homosexuals Do".

[13] Another California ballot initiative he backed, Proposition 102, would have mandated widespread testing, tracing of sexual partners by state authorities, and a mandatory quarantine of persons with AIDS.

During his 1994 campaign for the Senate, Dannemeyer was an early proponent of the Clinton body count conspiracy theory, and sent an alleged list of victims to congressional leadership.