January 25, 2013 12:24 PM UTC

KVOR host doesn't want to explain televised gay kiss to kids on New Year's Eve

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Last week, I reported that KVOR talk-show host Jeff Crank told his audience it was “disgusting” that NBC showed gay men ushering in the New Year with a big kiss.

I tweeted him to find out if he thinks a televised heterosexual kiss would be equally disgusting.

Crank, who ran against Republican Doug Lamborn for a Colorado Springs congressional seat, didn’t answer my question, but he invited me on his show Sat. to discuss the topic in more detail.

On the show, Crank scolded me for not including enough context in my blog post about his comment. He found a lot of the New Year’s antics on CNN and NBC disgusting, he said, including a crotch kiss between CNN co-anchors and partial nudity.

It’s true, Crank did mention these things, in addition to the gay kiss, and he told me that part of what he found “disgusting” was this other stuff.

“You focused on just one thing and made it sound like I was bashing people because of this kiss,” he told me.

Ok, but still, I asked Crank, does he think it’s “disgusting” for gay men to kiss on TV? He said:

“It’s the whole social set up that the media tries to use…to push a social agenda. I find that disgusting. I find it dispiriting, wrong, terrible that on the one night of the year, when most kids are up at midnight.. if there were two hertersexuals kissing there, most American families wouldn’t have to explain that moment to their children who were watching. And I just think it’s wrong that we continue to have that forced upon us so that we have to talk to our kids about it. And I just wonder why people don’t respect that there are some people who don’t want to have to describe that to our children, and that’s why it isn’t on the cartoon channel during the day.”

The norms of society have passed Crank by somehow, because he doesn’t see his view as discriminatory.

If Crank hasn’t already talked about gay relationships with his children, given the prominence of gay relationships in pop culture and in mass society, then New Year’s Eve is a good time for him to do so. God forbid folks explain love to their kids. It might ease their own fear, or even save their lives, if they’re gay or not.

I wouldn’t put a gay kiss in the same category as a crotch kiss, like Crank does. But I appreciated Crank having me on the show to talk about it, to air it out.

Listen to the interview here: Jeff Crank interviews me Jan. 19 on KVOR