West Virginia GOP Delegate Compares LGBTQ Community to the KKK

A West Virginia Republican delegate named Eric Porterfield has been caught up in a firestorm following multiple bigoted comments he made towards the LGBTQ community.

Porterfield, who has already been shunned by both Republicans and Democrats alike, made comments so disgusting that it left many in West Virginia’s House in shock.

“The LGBTQ is a modern day version of the Ku Klux Klan, without wearing hoods with their antics of hate,” Porterfield said in an interview Friday morning. Porterfield also went on to call the LQBTQ community a “terrorist group” .

These comments came in an interview after Porterfield made other insensitive comments towards the LQBTQ community during a diatribe he made related to a bill which would have permitted discrimination in West Virginia cities which had passed ordinances criminalizing the act of being homosexual and transexual.

“The LGBT is the most socialist group in this country,” he said. “They do not protect gays. There are many gays they persecute if they do not line up with their social ideology.”

His statements were met harshly, especially by West Virginia Democrats.

“Why do we need more hate?” Democratic delegate Danielle Walker, an African American woman who has a son who is gay, stated. “Why do we need more name-calling? Why do we need to reference other groups that illustrated so much hate and destruction and ugliness. Why do we need to do that? This is how we grow as a person, this is how we grow as a community, and this is how we grow as a state,” she continued.

Porterfield has said in the past that the reason he had originally run for office was in order to oppose a bill that would prohibit the practice of conversion therapy against gay children.