Days after City Councilman Ruben Diaz, Sr. was criticized for making inflammatory comments about the gay community, he hit back Thursday with a rally of his own.
Outside his Lafayette Avenue office in Unionport, Diaz Sr. said, in Spanish and through a translator that “the word homosexual has become a word that is offensive.”
"Now you have to say LGBT or gay community…just as the word [expletive deleted], you can't use that word either," he said.
"And in that aspect, the word homosexual, I'm not going to use it any longer," he continued.
Diaz Sr.’s told a Spanish-language radio station last week that the City Council was “controlled by the homosexual community.”
The comments led to a 45-1 vote Wednesday that removed Diaz Sr. from the Council’s Committee on For-Hire Vehicles, for which he served as the chair.
Councilman Diaz Sr. took to social media days ago and repeated again during his rally that he will only leave office if he is voted out by his district in 2021.