‘We Are Officially Off the Rails’
A homophobic Pennsylvania Republican state lawmaker chastised his Democratic colleague and said he is gay after being briefly touched on his suit jacket sleeve.Â
“Look, I’m a heterosexual,” GOP Rep. Daryl Metcalfe said during a committee meeting to Rep. Matt Bradford. “I have a wife, I love my wife. I don’t like men, as you might. But stop touching me all the time.”
Bradford had been speaking and trying to gain agreement, and had momentarily for a split second, place his hand on Metcalfe’s suit jacket sleeve.Â
“It’s like keep your hands to yourself,” Metcalfe, who has a lengthy anti-gay history, continued. “Like, if you want to touch somebody, you have people on your side of the aisle that might like it. I don’t.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mockingly reported the story with the headline, “Daryl Metcalfe comes out as heterosexual.”
Chairman Bradford, who is married to a woman and has four children with her, appeared stunned. Other lawmakers in the room laughed out of shock or embarrassment over Metcalfe’s remarks. One lawmaker put her hand over her face in what appeared to be an attempt to distance herself from Metcalfe’s remarks, and her own laughing.
Rep. Bradford, perhaps out of shock, also began to laugh nervously.
“We are officially off the rails,” he responded. “My intent was just to beg for your permission for about 30 seconds,” Bradford explained.
“Then beg, don’t touch,” Metcalfe instructed.
“I don’t know where we go from here,” was all Bradford could say.
Metcalfe is a hyper-conservative, and in 2012 bragged in an interview, “I was a Tea Partier before it was cool.”
The following year, PhillyMag called him “bigoted,” and reported: “Metcalfe has made it a personal mission to snuff out any form of same-sex marriage rights in the state of Pennsylvania, going so far as drafting legislation that not only solidifies Pennsylvania’s same-sex marriage ban, but outlaws civil unions and domestic partnerships, too.”
Also in 2013, Metcalfe had Rep. Brian Sims’ mic cut as he was about to begin speaking on same-sex marriage.
“His talking about that on the House floor would have been an open rebellion against Almighty God and God’s word, against God’s law,” Metcalfe said later. “And as a Christian, if I would have sat there and been silent, it would have violated my conscience because of my beliefs as a Christian.”
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