A few weeks after Ethan and Grayson Dolan were “canceled” by fans online for a resurfaced clip that showed them using a homophobic slur, the Dolan Twins have responded.

“At this point, I am 20 years old and I know exactly who I am. I know my values, I know my beliefs, and I know that I have a lot of friends and family members, a lot of people who care about me and watch our videos who are in the LGTBQ community,” Ethan explained in a new YouTube video. “I have the absolute utmost respect for them and I want them to feel safe and welcome because there is absolutely zero reason why they shouldn’t. I know for a fact that I am not homophobic.”

For those who missed it, in the old video, the guys were discussing some bullying that they had been the victims of in high school. Grayson recounted some of the things people had posted about him online, and some of them included homophobic slurs.

But when some people took the clip of him saying the homophobic slurs and started to spread it around Twitter in June 2020, it caused them to get a lot of backlash, and they even got “#DolanTwinsAreOverParty” to trend on Twitter. The clip made it look like he was the one saying it, but in reality, he was just telling his viewers what others had said about him.

“There’s a video of us explaining our not-so-pleasant high school experience. It was when we were letting our fans know why we were moving to Los Angeles,” Grayson continued in the new vid, with Ethan adding, “We were severely bullied in high school, I’m gonna be honest … We were trying to tell our story about how we were being treated in the most accurate way possible. And by doing that, we used a word that had been used against us a lot.”

He also said that the slur was “disgusting” and “not a part of their vocabulary at all.”

“Back then, I had no clue,” Ethan said. “It was six years ago, I was fourteen years old. It was never our intent to offend anyone, we were just quoting what we were called back then.”

“For anyone that is offended by that video clip, we are very sorry,” Grayson concluded. “We are not homophobic in any way.”

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