NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A Brooklyn City Council member apologized for using homophobic rhetoric on two separate occasions as a young musician in the hardcore music scene.
Bay Ridge councilman Justin Brannan, who is in the middle of a tight re-election race and is reportedly vying to lead the legislative body as its next speaker, used and referred to the terms “f----t” and “f-g” in self-deprecating ways during two magazine interviews in the late 1990s and mid-2000s, when he was 20 and 27 years old.
Brannan, now 43, told the Daily News while attending the SOMOS conference in Puerto Rico that he regrets using the slurs — and several members of the LGBTQ community have come to his defense.
“It doesn’t matter the context or the intent, whether you are gay or straight, it is an offensive, indefensible and hurtful term,” Brannan, who is straight, told the paper. “I apologize for any harm I may have caused decades ago. I have always been an ally to the LGBTQ community and I always will be.”
Brannan’s office did not immediately respond to a 1010 WINS request for comment.
In 2006, Brannan used the term “f----ts” during an interview with Ear Candy magazine when discussing how some fans would view the vegan diets of the members of his band Most Precious Blood.
“I mean, I’m sure there are some meathead kids that might be into us, but then they find out we are like vegans and now think we are a bunch of f-----ts and don’t like us anymore,” Brannan said during the interview. “But, whatever. We are not going to shove shit down people’s throats, but we are also not going to hide shit just to sell more records or to be more acceptable.”
Before that, in 2000, Brannan penned a letter to Maximum Rocknroll Magazine as a 20-year-old member of the band Indecision, in which he defended a reporter who used “f-g” while interviewing Brannan’s group.
In response to a reader’s complaint about the language, Brannan in his letter argued that it was a slang term and not meant to be derogatory against gay people.
“I am not saying ‘f-g’ should be any more acceptable or tolerated in everyday conversation than a derogatory slur such as ‘ ‘n----r,’ but in today’s society ‘f-g’ has become less of a belittling insult regarding one’s sexual preference and more of a regular, accepted, tolerated slang word — for better or for worse,” he wrote. “I didn’t decide this. I don’t make the additions to the English slang dictionary — it’s just a fact.”
Brannan added that he and his bandmates weren't homophobic or racist and that he would have stopped the interview if he felt the reporter crossed a line.
“Had [the reporter] said “n----r” or some other, in my eyes, viciously degrading racist or biased comment I would’ve stopped the interview and asked him in so many ways ‘What the fuck ?’, but it goes without saying that I knew Nick did not mean ‘f-g’ as an abusive synonym to ‘homosexual,’” Brannan wrote in the letter.
The Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, among other LGBTQ+ advocates, gave statements to the News condemning the language but supporting Brannan.
“Throughout his time in the Council, Justin has demonstrated that he is a champion of the LGBTQ+ community,” the club said in a statement. “While we condemn his defense of the use of defamatory language in the strongest terms, we acknowledge that Justin was 20 at the time that this was written and know that people evolve over time. We appreciate Justin has acknowledged his mistake.”
Brannan is currently waiting on absentee ballots to be counted in his bid for reelection for the council’s 43 district. He’s trailing to Republican challenger Brian Fox by fewer than 300 votes.