Riverdale Trustee Larry Jackson is speaking out against recent allegations that he made anti-gay remarks to another trustee.
"I find it offensive," Jackson said. "I believe in equality for everybody."
Jackson came under fire when Tiasha Echols, another Riverdale trustee, publicly accused him of using anti-gay slurs against women who disagreed with him.
Echols told Windy City Times the comments were so strong that she felt uncomfortable repeating them to the paper.
"He called her a lesbian term," Echols said of another female colleague. Echols said she heard Jackson use anti-gay epithets on two different occasions.
Echols sent a letter to Mayor Deyon Dean asking him to look into the matter.
A complaint was also filed with Jackson's employer, the Cook County Sheriff's Office. That complaint, however, was not formally investigated, Jackson said.
Jackson said that he never made such comments and accused Echols of trying to destroy his public image because the two disagree about much-debated building contract negotiations pending in the village.
He added that he has long been a supporter of LGBT issues, adding that in graduate school, he wrote a paper critical of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies same-sex couples federal relationship recognition.
Jackson, a social worker in the Cook County Sheriff's Office, said he regularly works with transgender and gay people and that he considers himself an advocate for LGBT issues at his job.