U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) once said he thought gay people shouldn’t be allowed to join the military, and that women should not be allowed in combat, because it would hamper the army’s ability to “kill and break things.” Now, he’s being challenged by Democrat Jessica Killin, who served in the U.S. Army.

“I just have always believed this about — the military shouldn’t be used for social experimentation, period. It should be used to fight and win wars. They should kill and break things, and that’s it,” said Crank in a May 14, 2016 episode of KVOR’s now-defunct Jeff Crank Show. “They shouldn’t have foisted upon them, you know, gays in the military or women in combat, all that kind of stuff should be done based on whether it’s best for the fighting force, not whether it is best for integration or our social mores or whatever else, and obviously this commander-in-chief [Barack Obama] does not agree with me on that.”

This is one of many extreme statements made by Crank over the course of his decades-long career in right-wing politics, now revisited by the Colorado Times Recorder as part of an analysis of over 800 hours of Crank’s radio show from 2011 to 2021. Aside from his KVOR radio tenure, Crank was once a staffer at Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing political group funded by the Koch brothers. His history also includes working as a conservative political consultant.

Crank’s district, which encompasses much of Colorado Springs, has long been considered a reliable seat for Republicans. But some speculate that could change this year, with rising anti-Trump sentiment and changing demographics possibly making the district more open to Democratic leadership.

In her campaign to unseat Crank, Killin has touted her record of overseas military service. She served overseas in the Military Police Corps. Restrictions on women serving in combat roles in the U.S. Military were not fully lifted until 2015.

“Jeff Crank has shown exactly who he is in Congress: a MAGA extremist who puts loyalty to Donald Trump ahead of the people he represents,” wrote Killin’s campaign manager Emily Dalgleish in a general statement regarding the Colorado Times Recorder’s series of articles about Crank’s radio show.

Gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians were historically excluded from military service, but following the institution of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy under Bill Clinton in 1993, they were allowed to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. The policy was repealed under the Obama administration in 2010, for the first time allowing gay people to serve in the military without restrictions.

“More than a decade of open service by LGBTQ+ Americans has demonstrated that allowing qualified people to serve does not undermine military readiness,” wrote Hale Allegretti, Chair of the Modern Military Association of America, a group which advocates for LGBTQ inclusion in the military, in an email to the Colorado Times Recorder. “That includes transgender Americans, who have served honorably and effectively in our armed forces. Service should be based on a person’s ability to meet the standards and accomplish the mission — not their sexual orientation or gender. Calling the service of LGBTQ+ Americans or women a ‘social experiment’ dismisses the sacrifices of the Americans who have raised their hands to serve.”

Crank’s Other Anti-LGBTQ Statements, Now and Then

During his time on the radio, Crank made more statements that were broadly demeaning towards LGBTQ people. In a 2015 episode of his show, he decried the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Crank went on to liken same-sex marriage to father-daughter incest.

“Taking that argument that people, consenting adults, have a right to do what they wanna do with regard to marriage, what about, what about adult incest, as long as it’s consensual? What about an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old? A young woman having a sexual relationship with her father. Is that okay?” Crank said in a June 27, 2015 episode of his radio show.

He went on to say, “The Supreme Court destroyed the institution of marriage. This isn’t about freedom. This isn’t about liberty. It isn’t about equal rights. It is not about civil rights. When did being able to be married become a civil right? It isn’t a civil right, to become married. This is simply about a mob that chose it was going to call other people bigots until it got its way. A political court on a 5-4 decision handed that loud group a victory. And now we have issues of religious freedom that we’re going to have to confront.”

Crank’s reaction to Obergefell was far from an outlier. Two years prior, Crank said that a televised gay kiss on NBC was “disgusting.”

Even in 2018, multiple years after Obergefell, Crank still voiced opposition to gay marriage. During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Crank named the legalization of gay marriage as a reason why he thought liberal justices should not be allowed to control the court.

“This is an orchestrated attempt. They can’t lose this. What do they do if they lose?” Crank said in a September 29, 2018 episode of his radio show. “What if they can’t legislate through the Supreme Court anymore? How do you get to gay marriage if you don’t have the Supreme Court overturn what Congress decided, in a law that was passed by Congress and sent to the President of the United States? How do you, how do you rule over liberal land if you don’t do that?”

In 2022, a year after he left his job at KVOR in protest of the company’s COVID vaccine requirement, he was no longer as loudly opposed to LGBTQ rights – but he still refused to call the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs a hate crime, and criticized anyone who did.

“Politicians and pastors perpetuate false and unfair attacks from the left when they pander to the LGBTQ community before knowing all the facts,” Crank wrote the show notes of his weekly podcast at the time.

Crank has largely steered clear of gay marriage since launching his 2024 run for Congress.

An adviser to the Crank campaign did not respond to the following questions:

  • In 2015, Mr. Crank said that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision “destroyed the institution of marriage.” Does Mr. Crank still believe that marriage as an institution has been harmed by allowing same-sex couples to be married? Would he still support a Supreme Court decision overturning Obergefell?
  • In 2016, Mr. Crank said that allowing “gays in the military or women in combat” constituted unnecessary “social experimentation.” Has his stance on this changed – i.e., does he still believe gay people should be banned from the military, and that women should not be allowed in combat? 

But Crank’s adviser issued a statement to the Colorado Times Recorder stating, in part, that in its series of articles on Crank’s radio shows, the Colorado Times Recorder is “cherry-picking whatever they possibly can twist to serve their partisan political purposes. These are the actions of campaign researchers seeking to achieve a cheap political hit, not journalism.”

Bryon Neitzel provided research assistance for this story.

RELATED: Read Parts I and II of the Colorado Times Recorder’s series on the Jeff Crank Show: As a Talk Radio Host, Congressman Jeff Crank Embodied MAGA, Even Before It Existed and The ‘Greatest Hoax of Our Time’: On His Radio Show, Congressman Jeff Crank Foreshadowed Trump’s Agenda

Tomorrow: What Crank said on his radio show about conspiracies.