What to say about Darryl Metcalfe the esteemed representative from Cranberry?
First some background on me. I grew up in a very small town called West Middlesex located in Mercer County which is about an hour away from here. Living there was not easy, in fact, it was sheer hell. At the time I did not know I was a lesbian/gay, I just knew I was different. Very different. When the opportunity came at last to go away to college at Penn State's main campus I was ready. While at college I discovered why I was different. Now I had a name -- homosexuality -- to go with why I was different. And I was okay with it. I remember going to the student bookstore to read all I could about what it meant to be gay. I never felt morally inferior because I was gay or that I was going to hell. When I reached law school at West Virginia University I got my first taste of homophobia when I confided in someone who promptly told others. Several of my female classmates who were "friends" who sat next to me in class literally moved across the room from me. I guess being gay was like having the "cooties." It was juvenile, despicable behavior. It hurt but I never considered hiding from my true self.
When I graduated from law school my maternal grandpa wanted me to move back home and get a lawyer job in Sharon, the "big town" near West Middlesex. I decided to move and live in Pittsburgh instead where at least I knew they had a "gay" newspaper and gay bars. Occasionally as I have gotten older I have felt a pang of remorse about the decision to move away from my grandparents who I was very close to. But Darryl Metcalfe always reinforces my decision that living in the "big city" was the right choice.
I used to pass by Cranberry occasionally on my way home from Pittsburgh. Ten, twenty years ago it was nothing but fields. Now it is urban sprawl with a capital U S. It also seems as though it is a frontline on the continuing war against the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender community. Recently one of the pro-family groups had a shindig there and pro-family typically means anti-LGBT. Now I don't know if the folks who live in the Cranberry area are "bigots" but they do keep electing Mr. Metcalfe who is known for making outrageous defamatory statements about our community. I do know that Mr. Metcalfe ably demonstrates the narrowmindedness that I wanted to escape from when I left for college/left for Pittsburgh.
Amending the Pennsylvania constitution to discriminate further against a class of people who are not only citizens but TAXPAYERS (people like him seem to forget this) is nothing but pandering to base elements of society who are afraid/don't like people who are "different." Mr. Metcalfe may think of himself as some type of righteous defender against the LGBT hordes who are poised to ransack the good people of Pennsylvania with their desire to get married, but I suspect he is a typical politician who would not be doing this unless he is getting clues from his constituents that this is okay. And that's the truly scary part. I am biased of course but I fail to see how "gay" marriage would destroy heterosexual marriages and the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Heterosexuals dont't need our help in destroying their marriages, they seem to be perfectly competent doing it without our help (see Spears, Brittany) among others. To deny two people who love each other and want to have the same type of rights and priveleges as everyone else is not based on science or economics, it is based on fear. Fear fueled by religions who twist and turn the Bible into justification to hate others.
Fear is something that the right wing has been perfecting and pandering with since the dawn of the civil rights movements. Both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were masters at it. Now Mr. Metcalfe has allies to work with and a republican governor to enable him. For the LGBT community beating back this amendment is imperative because Mr. Metcalfe and others probably won't stop once they get some successes. Contact your state legislator, write letters to the editor or blog or facebook posts. Do all that you can because the right-wing has an agenda to discriminate against our community, to take away a woman's right to choose, to eviscerate the unions, to roll back and push back the rights of anyone that they don't like. We are in the crosshairs nationally and state wide. It is 2011 and still we are discriminating based on fear and irrational hatred.
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