Lawmaker Loses His Shit, Says I'M A STRAIGHT MAN After Colleague Touches His Arm During a Meeting

By Katherine Krueger  |  December 6, 2017 | 5:45pm
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I DEFINITELY DON’T LIKE MEN THAT WAY, is a perfectly normal response to your colleague, another state lawmaker, touching your arm during a public meeting, at least according to Pennsylvania state Representative Daryl Metcalfe.

During a Tuesday night committee meeting about a land-use bill, fellow state Representative Matt Bradford, a Democrat, laid his hand on Metcalfe’s arm—for just a moment—in a bid to get his attention.

It clearly irked his Republican colleague, who stopped the meeting to announce: “Look, I’m a heterosexual. I have a wife, I love my wife, I don’t like men—as you might. But stop touching me all the time.”

In video of the exchange flagged by The Washington Post, Bradford and several other committee members started laughing, clearly not knowing what to make of Metcalfe’s outburst.

But he went on to put a finer homophobic point on it, saying: “Keep your hands to yourself. Like, if you want to touch somebody, you have people on your side of the aisle who might like it, I don’t.”

As members of the committee kept awkwardly trying to laugh the moment off, Bradford tried to explain: “My intent was to beg for your permission for about 30 seconds,” to which Metcalfe fired back: “Then beg, don’t touch.”

According to a biography posted on the state legislature’s website, Bradford is married to a woman and has four children.

The state’s first openly gay lawmaker, Representative Brian Sims, called out the absurdity the remarks in a post on Facebook where he called Metcalfe the state Republican Party’s “head bigot.”

“You can’t make this stuff up! The most homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, xenophobic member of our government is using legislative time, and tax payer dollars, to interrupt a meeting to announce his sexual orientation,” Sims wrote.

 
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