A Super Bowl ad too far? Straights can take it

[Commentary] On Sunday, as I hunker down with family and friends for the Super Bowl, I can rest easy knowing that CBS is working hard to defend my heterosexual sensitivities.

On the surface, heterosexuality doesn't seem like a particularly distinctive trait or one in need of broad institutional protections, but many seem to believe that we heterosexuals are delicate souls. The media, the government, the military -- all are ready to head off potential sightings of gay people. In the case of the Super Bowl, CBS has refused to broadcast an ad by the gay dating Web site ManCrunch.

CBS didn't bother to offer a real explanation for the ban, saying simply, "the creative is not within the network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday." Let's review those standards. In 2007, the last time CBS broadcast the Super Bowl, it ran a Snickers commercial featuring an inadvertent heterosexual man-on-man kiss. The second-to-last time, in 2004, the esteemed network shared Janet Jackson's nipple with the country. So what is so offensive about the ManCrunch ad? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the gay part.

Apparently, we can't have our Super Bowl disrupted by gayness, particularly in high-def on the big screen. Heterosexuality has never felt so fragile.