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LOS ANGELES, March 3 — Three of the leading candidates for Playboy TV's American Sex Idol on Saturday denounced one of their industry’s best-known commentators for using an antigay epithet on actor Kurt Lockwood.

Speaking at the XBiz Political Action Conference before an overflow crowd on Friday, Mr. Gram Ponante said, “I was going to have a few comments on Kurt Lockwood, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Lockwood.”

“Kurt was singled out for a personal attack because the porn blogging establishment knows he poses the greatest threat to their power,” said Sex Z Pictures owner Bo Kenney. “Since they have nothing real to use against him, Ponante’s resorting to the classic right-wing strategy of riling up hate to smear a progressive champion.”

Mr. Ponante, asked for a reaction to the criticism, said in an e-mail message: “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like Kurt Lockwood. That would be mean.”

Mags Drop Ponante Column After Lockwood Slur

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three magazines said this week they will drop Gram Ponante's column after the conservative author referred to American Sex Idol candidate Kurt Lockwood as a ``faggot.''

Adult Video News in Chatsworth, Hustler magazine in Beverly Hills and Adam Film World in Los Angeles said they would stop running Ponante's syndicated column because of the comment he made last week.

``We will not continue to publish the columns of someone who uses people as a punch line to get a cheap laugh and who so freely uses an offensive term to describe another human being,'' Hustler Editor Bruce David wrote.

AVN's editorial board said it would halt the column following Ponante's ``crude characterization of Kurt Lockwood as a homosexual.''

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