Cincinnati's Homosexual Activists Won't Win, Pro-family Leader Says

by Chad Groening
February 11, 2004

(AgapePress) - Radical homosexual groups in Cincinnati, Ohio, say they have enough petition signatures to get an issue put on the November ballot that would repeal the city's ban on special rights for homosexuals. However, a pro-family activist says the majority of the city's residents want to keep the ban in place.

In 1993 the people of Cincinnati overwhelmingly voted to enact into the city's charter Article 12, a resolution prohibiting the conferral of minority or protected status, quota preference, or other preferential treatment based on sexual orientation.

Phil Burris is president of Citizens for Community Values and a strong proponent of the principle of "Equal Rights, Not Special Rights." His group helped get Article 12 before the voters in 1993.

Burris says the reason Cincinnati residents voted overwhelmingly to enact the article is because the city council had passed a 1992 "Gay Rights Ordinance." The equal rights advocate contends that the council was untrustworthy back then and still cannot be relied upon to abide by to the will of the majority of its constituency.

"The reason we put [Article 12] in the city charter rather than repeal the law back in 1992 is because we didn't trust city council then, and we don't trust them today," Burris says. According to him, council members have been lobbied and wooed by homosexual activist groups, many of which have made financial contributions and otherwise supported local politicians' campaigns in order to get them onto the city council.

But Burris says Article 12 was enacted for the express purpose of preventing city council members from caving in to the demands of radical homosexual activist groups, as many feel the council did in approving the pro-homosexual ordinance in 1992. He points out that several polls show that the majority of the people of Cincinnati still support the rule prohibiting preferential treatment for homosexuals.

As for the disputed percentage of the citizenry that various surveys indicate would support the repeal of the ban, Burris says, "It's the same group of people, 32 to 34 percent; they're just better organized, but we will beat them at the polls."

Since the homosexual activists have apparently managed to gather enough signatures to get the repeal on the ballot, Burris says his group is readying itself to campaign hard against the measure.