I agree, and have written about that elsewhere, actually.
One of the biggest shameful moments of Bad Brains had to have been when a fight started because they played in Austin in the 80s and some dispute broke out between Bad Brains (actually, mostly HR from what I understand) and other bands they were playing with, MDC and the Big Boys, or The Dicks. All 3 Austin bands, all 3 fronted by gay men. HR is notorious for his statements about that stuff, even the song "Don't Blow Bubbles" off Quickness is about homophobic.
It sucks that musical talent/innovation does not have to jibe with moral/ethical boundaries, a la Black Flag's "Guilty of Being White," and the homophobic stuff Fear (gay baiting audiences, Decline of Western Civ) and Meatmen, etc., would spew out. That was all in the 80s, too. So it wasn't just Bad Brains. Or SSD talking about "new wave faggots." The band Nig Heist's name itself, and the story behind it, is pretty racist. Or how about Agnostic Front's "Public Assistance" from the mid to late 80s: " How come it's minorities who cry / Things are too tough / On TV with their gold chains / Claim they don't have enough" etc.
-B.
Wendy Lyon wrote:
"I haven't been involved in the punk scene for almost 20 years, so maybe things have changed, but back in those days it was quite the opposite - Bad Brains were able to get away with saying stuff that we would never have dreamed of tolerating from any other band. Not just homophobic comments, but things like explicitly justifying violence against women (I distinctly remember an interview with a DC fanzine around 1985 in which one of their members explains how it's a man's responsibility to "administer justice" to a disobedient woman "in order to protect her from herself"). I don't know if people were hesitant to call them on it precisely because they were black, or if it was just that they had so much cachet for being Bad Brains. Maybe a bit of both."