Esquire apologizes for publishing anti-gay slur

I’m awfully glad that GLAAD got on Esquire magzzine’s case for its use of the offensive word “faggot” in a section of its May issue, currently on newsstands. The other f-word appearanced in a section about how to “curse well” and is part of the mag’s “How to be a Man” issue.

Oh, great.

GLAAD had a tragic example of the harm the word can cause when it contacted Editor-in-Chief David Granger with its concerns: the story of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a Massachusetts kid who hung himself last week  after enduring intense bullying at school including name calling and use of the anti-gay f-word. Esquire had used the slur to describe how to talk to “your neighbor’s nosy nine-year old boy.”

Unbelievable.

The magazine has apologized and you can find the online apology here.  And look for it in June print edition, due on newsstands in early May.  It reads:

A Note to Our Readers

An apology regarding the “Curse Well” article in Esquire’s May issue

In the “How to Curse” section of our May 2009 feature, “How to Skin a Moose,” we presented a parody of extreme profanity and its users, contrasting exaggerated examples of offensive language with ordinary situations. The target of the parody was profanity itself and not the various people who might be its object, including gay people. But we used a particularly offensive phrase we shouldn’t have. It certainly was not our intent to cause pain. Judging from the reaction, we did. For that we are sincerely sorry.