Photo By Cameron Knight

The successful effort to repeal Article 12 started in 2003 and continued up to the election Nov. 2. Support for the repeal campaign found vivid expression in the annual Pride Parade last summer

Local progressives disappointed by other election results latched onto the repeal of Article 12 of the Cincinnati City Charter as a sign that basic human respect wasn't a distant mirage -- unlike global respect for the United States or strict mercury emissions standards or the federal budget surplus.

Article 12 had for 11 years made Cincinnati the only city in the country to specifically prohibit legislation protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. To some people, that meant Cincinnati legislated hate. But regardless of personal beliefs about sexual expression, after a decade many Cincinnatians couldn't help but notice that Article 12 made the city look really, really bad.

Just after Cincinnatians voted 54-46 to repeal the charter amendment, the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) sent publicity to nearly 200 meeting planners who'd mentioned Article 12 among their reasons for crossing Cincinnati off their lists.

"Find your way back to Cincinnati," says a letter by Alan Welch, president of CVB. His reasons listed Article 12's repeal even more prominently than expansion of the convention center and a "veritable renaissance" on the riverfront.

Welch says the letters have garnered a few sentiments of "good to hear," but no new contracts yet.

Because it's publicly funded, CVB didn't take a position on the repeal referendum.

"Our only statement was a statement of fact: When it passed, we lost business," Welch says.

After voters passed Article 12 in 1993, eight organizations canceled their conventions and took $25 million worth of business elsewhere, he says.

The next step
The headline on CVB's press release crowed, the repeal of Article 12 was tantamount to "enabling the city to pass laws protecting gay citizens."

One of those laws could be the city's Human Rights Ordinance, passed by city council in 1992, which prohibits discrimination in employment, housing or public accommodation on the basis of race, gender, age, color, religion, disability status, marital status or ethnic, national or Appalachian regional origin.

It was that law's initial inclusion of sexual orientation among its protected traits that first mobilized the anti-gay crusaders to convince voters to pass Article 12.

With Article 12 out of the way, city council is now free to reintroduce sexual orientation into the human rights ordinance. However, a few who supported the repeal of Article 12 don't want to see that happen. Some are even angry that gay rights supporters would try.

"I was at a number of debates and a number of meetings where the people who were behind the repeal of Article 12 specifically told us that was not their next step," says activist Nate Livingston. "It'll give the people who wanted (Article 12) to stay the ammunition to say, 'See, these people can't be trusted; this is the beginning of a full-out gay rights agenda."

Gary Wright, chairman of Citizens to Restore Fairness (CRF), the campaign that won repeal, certainly doesn't expect all who supported the effort -- for example, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati -- to uniformly continue supporting gay rights.

"At this point, all anyone agreed to do was repeal Article 12, and now we have, and the next step for some of us will be to work on the human rights ordinance, clearly, and for other people it won't," he says.

City Councilman John Cranley says he's unaware of any movement to reintroduce sexual orientation to the human rights ordinance. He says he'd support the effort as long as it had the same grassroots support CRF garnered.

Working to amend the human rights ordinance is certainly consistent with CRF's mission, Wright says, but the coalition is also thinking through what role, if any, it should play in other social justice issues.

Maybe the next step is to shed nonprofit status, become a political action committee and tackle the new amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage.

'They don't want gay people'
While many in the city celebrate the demise of Article 12, one woman, speaking on condition of anonymity, says she's preparing to move out of Ohio with her partner and their baby.

"Were it just the first line of the amendment, it would not be that big a deal," she says. "I didn't care how marriage was defined. That really didn't affect us that much."

But the second line of the state constitutional amendment, passed Nov. 2, says, "This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."

That strips her of the right to hospital visits with her partner and her parental rights with their baby, the woman says, so she's decided to leave Cincinnati.

She says most of their close friends are heterosexual couples with children, and that at first their social circle didn't quite understand the implications of passing the amendment.

"I think the fact that I'm leaving opened the eyes of many people," she says.

Sure, there might be some who were just fooled into denying her family legal protection.

"There are some people who think they were really voting to protect marriage, but marriage was already protected by (the Defense of Marriage Act)," she says. "How much more protection can you get? It's not like the states needed an additional amendment, but it's sending a powerful message."

That message seems clear enough to her.

"I think there's a greater number of people that would delight in my leaving," she says. "That is what people want. They don't want gay people in their state."

If CRF succeeds in educating voters and repealing the new constitutional amendment, will she consider returning to Cincinnati?

She says she'll keep her options open, but right now it would seem hard to justify.

"I'm not bearing other grudges against Cincinnati," she says. "But as long as there are other, better places to live, why wouldn't we be there?" ©