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Reprinted without permission.

Lorain Morning Journal
Friday, January 15, 1993

ANTI-GAY STATUTE SOUGHT FOR OHIO

By Tom McKee
Moring Journal Columbus Bureau


Columbus - A "pro-family" group want to put a measure on the Ohio ballot this
fall that would strike down laws prohibiting discrimination against
homosexuals, gay rights activists say.
     Passage of a similar law in Colorado in November prompted gay rights
activists to launch a boycott they claim has cost the state $20 million in
tourism so far.
     Ohio Pro-Family Forum members, however, aren't saying what their plans
include.
     Gay-rights activists in Ohio and across the country predict Ohio will be
among about a dozen states to have an anti-gay rights constitutional
amendment on the November ballot.
     A federal judge temporarily blocked the Colorado amendment yesterday,
however, pending a decision on whether the controversial amendment is
constitutional.
     Oregon voters rejected a similar measure the same day Colorado voters
approved it.
     The Ohio Pro-Family Forum met Jan. 8 and 9 in Columbus for the first
time to assemble a "pro-family" platform and discuss "the homosexual agenda,"
said Phil Burress, a forum member and president of a Cincinnati-based
organization that fiercely opposed a gay-rights ordinance passed in the Queen
City last year.
     "I can't speak to that," Burress said repeatedly when asked whether his
group is planning an attempt tat a statewide ban on gay-rights laws in Ohio.
     About 24 "pro-family" groups, representing 54 of Ohio's 88 counties, are
included in the forum, Burress said.  He would not say which groups are
members of his organization.
"    "It was a very private meeting," he said.  They plan to gather again in
three months.
     Forum members are being tight-lipped about their plans until they are
finalized, Burress said.
     Oregon Citizens Alliance officials yesterday confirmed they have been
contacted by a Cincinnati-area anti-gay rights group and were asked for
information concerning such a move in Ohio.
     Burress' Cincinnati-area group is beginning a push to repeal an ordinance
passed last year in that city, which granted gays protection agains
discrimination.
     Columbus recently adopted a similar law.  Burress called the ordinance a
"fundamental mistake" because it gives "special status to a sect of people
who make such a behavioral choice."  The group also was involved in a
separate Cincinnati controversy in 1990 over Robert Maplethorpe photographs it
considered pornographic.
     Conservative religious leaders, including TV evangelist Pat Robertson
are responsible for the recent anti-gay insurgence said Scot Nakagawa, a
director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute in
Washington D.C.



Ed Pfeiffer

Preferred E-mail:  ejp62@cas.org
Alternate E-mail:  ejp@sporty.col.oh.us

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