Before Jeff Crank represented Colorado Springs in Congress, he spent a decade on the radio. The Colorado Times Recorder has been going through more than 800 hours of it, from 2011 to 2021. The third installment of its series, published September 24, 2026, is about gay Americans — whether they should be allowed to serve their country, and whether they should be allowed to marry.
Crank's answer, on tape, was no to both.
"Gays in the military or women in combat"
On a May 14, 2016 episode of KVOR's Jeff Crank Show, Crank said:
"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."
And:
"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."
By then, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had been gone for years — it was repealed in 2010, letting gay Americans serve openly for the first time. The last restrictions on women in combat roles were lifted in 2015.
His Democratic opponent this November, Jessica Killin, is an Army veteran. She served overseas in the Military Police Corps.
The chair of the Modern Military Association of America, which advocates for LGBTQ inclusion in the military, told the Times Recorder: "Calling the service of LGBTQ+ Americans or women a 'social experiment' dismisses the sacrifices of the Americans who have raised their hands to serve."
He compared same-sex marriage to incest
The day after the Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, Crank reached for this comparison on his June 27, 2015 show:
"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?"
He went on: "The Supreme Court destroyed the institution of marriage... 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."
The Times Recorder posted the audio.
Two years before that, he had called a gay kiss on NBC "disgusting."
He kept at it for years
This wasn't a one-time reaction to a big ruling. During the fight over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation in September 2018, Crank named gay marriage as the kind of thing liberal justices shouldn't be allowed to deliver: "How do you get to gay marriage if you don't have the Supreme Court overturn what Congress decided...? How do you, how do you rule over liberal land if you don't do that?"
In 2022, after the mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in his own city, Crank objected to calling it a hate crime before all the facts were in, 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," he wrote in the show notes of his podcast.
He won't talk about it now
Since running for Congress in 2024, Crank has mostly stopped talking about gay marriage. When the Times Recorder asked him about these recordings, his campaign didn't answer the specific questions. An adviser called the series "cherry-picking" and "a cheap political hit, not journalism."
The recordings are his own words, on his own show. It's the same archive that has him calling man-made climate change the top entry on his list of "the greatest hoax of our time".
Voters in Colorado Springs are entitled to know whether the man who told his listeners gay people shouldn't serve still believes it — especially the gay service members and veterans who call Colorado Springs home. He has declined to say.
What the tapes show
On his radio show, Jeff Crank said in 2016 that the military shouldn't have had "gays in the military or women in combat" foisted on it, and in 2015 answered the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling by asking whether father-daughter incest was next. In 2018 he was still arguing against gay marriage, and after the 2022 Club Q shooting he criticized people for calling it a hate crime. His campaign won't answer questions about any of it.
Source
The Jeff Crank Show: CO Springs Congressman Opposed Gay Rights to Marry & Join Military — Jamie O'Rourke, Colorado Times Recorder, September 24, 2026
Image: Colorado Times Recorder.
