NYC Councilman Justin Brannan regrets using anti-gay rhetoric while in punk rock scene: ‘Indefensible and hurtful’
Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan has come clean about using an “indefensible and hurtful” anti-gay slur on two separate occasions while he was a touring musician in the city’s hardcore punk scene.
Brannan, a Democrat representing Bay Ridge who’s vying to become Council speaker next year if he prevails in a tight reelection race first, made the offensive remarks in an interview and a written letter published in since-defunct underground music mags in the late 1990s and mid-2000s.
“It doesn’t matter as the context or the intent, whether you are gay or straight, it is an offensive, indefensible and hurtful term,” Brannan told the Daily News after being asked about his past comments. “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.”
In the interview, which ran in Ear Candy Magazine’s June 2006 issue, Brannan, then 27, used the anti-gay slur in a self-deprecating way while talking about how all the members of his band Most Precious Blood were vegan.
“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-----s and don’t like us anymore. But whatever,” he told the outlet. “We are not going to shove s--t down people’s throats, but we are also not going to hide s--t just to sell more records or to be more acceptable.”
That wasn’t the first time Brannan had made casual usage of the phrase.
In 1999, Brannan, then 20 and a member of the band Indecision, wrote a lengthy letter to the editor of Maximum Rocknroll Magazine railing against a reader who had penned a complaint to the outlet about one of its reporters using the same slur while interviewing Brannan.
Brannan, who’s white and straight, argued the reader was overreacting because the reporter had used the phrase as a “slang term” that wasn’t aimed at, or referring to, gay people.
He then drew a distinction between that term and the N-word.
“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 went on to write that his band is not “anti-gay” and that he does not “suffer from homophobia.” He also said he would’ve shut down the interview if the reporter had said: “’n----r’ or some other, in my eyes, viscously degrading, racist or biased comment.”
But, Brannan added, “No one will turn their head on the street and look at you in utter disgust if you call someone ‘a f-g’ or if you deem a certain person or situation ‘gay’ — it’s just accepted.”
Brannan, now 43, put his music career on ice after his 2017 election to the Council.
He’s currently waiting on absentee ballots to be counted in his reelection race against Republican challenger Brian Fox, who’s leading him by less than 300 votes, according to Board of Elections tallies.
If he’s reelected, Brannan is expected to be among a handful of Council members jockeying to become speaker, one of the most influential positions in municipal government that comes with considerable power over the city’s legislative agenda.
He held a reception at this week’s Somos conference in Puerto Rico — a confab for New York politicos — to garner support for his speaker bid.
Allen Roskoff, one of the city’s most prominent LGBTQ advocates and the president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, said Brannan’s comments in 2006 and 1999 were “offensive and inappropriate, absolutely.”
“However, it was many years ago, and I know him as an upstanding, progressive advocate on LGBTQ issues, and I stand with him,” Roskoff said. “I’m not defending that instance from years ago; I’m defending who he is since I’ve known him. It can’t undo the words he used, but he has certainly become a strong ally, strong friend and strong supporter for the LGBTQ community. He is a good guy.”
The Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, the Big Apple’s first citywide LGBTQ advocacy organization, agreed with Roskoff.
“Throughout his time in the Council, Justin has demonstrated that he is a champion of the LGBTQ+ community,” the club, which endorsed Brannan’s reelection bid, 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.”
Chris Sommerfeldt is a reporter covering City Hall and all things NYC politics for the Daily News. Prior, Chris covered the Trump and Biden administrations, Congress and national politics. He began working for the Daily News in 2015 as a general assignment reporter. His superpower is biking everywhere, no matter the distance or the weather.