The Texas talk show host who had an on-air meltdown over the footage of gay football player Michael Sam kissing his partner on live television complained to Fox News on Thursday that she felt singled out for expressing her views.
"If you are trying to maintain traditional values and views in your home and you share them, you're going to get lambasted because it goes against what's politically correct," Amy Kushnir told host Shannon Bream.
Kushnir also said she has received rape and death threats online since she walked off the set of her show, The Broadcast, earlier this week out of outrage that ESPN showed Sam kissing boyfriend Vito Cammisano out of happiness over being drafted by the St. Louis Rams. Sales of memorabilia featuring Sam have subsequently skyrocketed.
Bream did not ask Kushnir what she would have done had Sam been shown kissing a woman, but during her original protest, Kushnir said she would have advised them to "get a room." However, neither of them mentioned that, for most of the past century, "mainstream values" dictated that members of the LGBTQ community keep quiet about their sexuality.
"I didn't feel it was appropriate," Kushnir told Bream. "It was over the top, ESPN using that as an opportunity to put out shocking video when ESPN is a sports network that families watch. I mean, we've got children that watch sports. They watch ESPN all the time, so it bothered me that they used this as an opportunity to promote a left-wing agenda."
At the same time, Kushnir did not follow along with Bream's attempt to link Sam's kiss to what she described as an overall oversexualization in the broadcast of sporting events.
"We watch a lot of ESPN in our house," Bream said. "There are a lot of Victoria's Secret commercials every five seconds, Go Daddy is very provocative, you've got beer commercials with people coming out of their clothes. Are you concerned about the bigger conversation about sexuality being thrust on kids in these sporting events, or were you specifically concerned because maybe this was something you didn't want your kids exposed to?"
"In this case, we were specifically talking about the Michael Sam incident," Kushnir answered. "The kissing incident."
Watch the interview, as posted online on Thursday, below.
This image obtained from the Mississippi Highway Patrol shows emergency personnel on Highway 49 near Silver City after a tornado touched down © Handout / Mississippi Highway Patrol/AFP
