By Gregory Korte
Enquirer staff writer

Terry Payne (left), a field organizer with Citizens to Restore Fairness, Justin Brogden, the campaign's intern, and April J. Martin, a volunteer, canvass a Westwood neighborhood Saturday. The Enquirer/MEGGAN BOOKER

If only gay-rights supporters could talk to every voter in Cincinnati, they're sure they can persuade them to repeal the 1993 charter amendment that forbids a gay-rights ordinance.

And so they aim to do just that.

In the most sophisticated grassroots political campaign in the city's history, the Campaign to Repeal Article XII hopes to identify - by name, address and phone number - every one of the 63,001 votes they figure they'll need to strike the provision from Cincinnati's charter. It's the only constitution in the country - federal, state or city - which expressly forbids its legislative authority from passing a gay-rights law.

So far, they're at 13,500 voters, not including the 255 added to the list Saturday.

The strategy, which political consultants call "voter identification," is slow, labor-intensive work. A sign on the wall of the campaign's Knowlton Corner headquarters in Northside says, "ID'ing supporters is the most important work of the campaign."

Added campaign manager Justin Turner, "It's also the most challenging."

But organizers of the repeal campaign are convinced it's the most effective, by identifying supporters to turn out to the polls and targeting swing voters with a message tailored for them.

The campaign also touts its long-term benefits. If the issue ever gets on the ballot again, they already have a list of core supporters who can be quickly mobilized.

And it can change minds. People who don't remember a television commercial they saw five minutes ago will remember a conversation on their front porch five months ago, they say.

The conversations stick closely to a script, which the campaign hopes to repeat 191,000 times between now and November. That's the number of registered voters in the city's population of 311,284. Of those, 126,000 are likely to show up at the polls; the magic number is half of that plus one.

The script is heavy on words such as "fairness" and "discrimination."

And they're not afraid to use the word "gay."

It's in the script four times.

The campaign has a considerable phone-banking operation and will bombard voters with television ads and direct mail in October. But organizers have made a conscious decision to stick to its message and not respond to the other side.

'They should fight that'

Tackling Westwood's Precinct 25-R along Ferguson Road were April J. Martin, a 31-year-old college student from Northside, and Justin Brogden, a 16-year-old high school student from Pleasant Ridge.

"If this is about gay marriage, I don't believe in that," was their first response, from Angela McKenna, 32, who manages an apartment building owned by her father. But after being told Article XII has nothing to do with gay marriage, McKenna seemed open-minded. "As a landlord, it wouldn't matter to me if someone gay was living here or not. And I don't think it's right to fire me."

Across the street, they again explained the issue to 63-year-old Joan Holder, a receptionist. And again, the gay-marriage issue came up almost immediately.

Sticking to the script, Martin said Article XII "unfairly singles out gay people in Cincinnati and prohibits them from seeking protection against discrimination."

"We think that's wrong, that everyone should be treated fairly. What do you think?" Martin asked.

"Well, it's like anything else. It's something people should teach their children about, that discrimination is wrong," Holder said.

Pausing, she added, "I'm afraid how far it will go. I don't believe in gay marriage."

"If you believe discrimination is wrong, then you have an opportunity to do something about that," the canvasser said.

"Somebody can be fired just because they're gay? They should fight that."

"That's what we're doing," Martin said with a good-natured laugh.

Martin put the woman down as "undecided."

Slow work

Two hours later - after getting lost and skipping over countless locked apartment buildings - the more experienced Martin had logged nine supporters, four undecided voters and three opponents. Brogden, a campaign intern on his first canvass ever, had seven supporters and five undecided.

That's not including some people who flat-out refuse to discuss the issue. The campaign doesn't waste its time trying to persuade people who are obviously against them. "I talked to someone today who said that gay people started AIDS," Martin said. Another woman said Article XII "should never have been an issue in the first place" before slamming the door on Brogden. (He's still not sure which side she's on.)

All told, the campaign recruited 17 new volunteers, identified 255 supporters and logged 97 undecided voters Saturday. The supporters will get reminder phone calls before the election. The undecided voters will later be targeted for follow-up letters - some hand-written by volunteers.

It's slow, volunteer-intensive work. At this rate, it will take the campaign 194 more Saturdays to identify the 63,001 voters. There are only 19 more weeks to Election Day.

But it's also rewarding work, volunteers say.

"Look at his face," Turner said Saturday as the 16-year-old Brogden returned from Westwood. "When he left here this morning, you could tell he was a little shy and nervous. Now he's glowing."

Turner said volunteers are often intimidated at first by the prospect of talking about gay rights to complete strangers. And just as the face-to-face campaign is intended to challenge voters' perceptions of who a gay-rights supporter is, the door-to-door work challenges the volunteers' own preconceptions of who their voters are.

Invisible opponents

Mayor Charlie Luken, who unofficially kicked off the campaign in January by making the repeal a major theme of his State of the City Address, was worried at first that the campaign would degenerate into a replay of 1993.

"I have been impressed with their grassroots approach, and I think the one-on-one approach is working," he said. "The wrong approach would be to try to shame people into voting for repeal. That's not going to work. The message needs to be upbeat and welcoming."

But the grassroots campaign doesn't impress its opponents, the Equal Rights, Not Special Rights Committee. Chaired by Phil Burress, an activist for conservative social causes, the committee represents the remnants of the campaign that passed the charter amendment in 1993.

"We don't even know if they're going to be on the November ballot or not," he said. "They have to submit the signatures, and then City Council has to put it on the ballot. And then after that we can have a campaign. I'm not spending a lot of time on this until then. It's a speck on the radar screen. "

Burress said he's spending his time campaigning for his own initiative, the Ohio Marriage Amendment. It would write the existing ban on gay marriages into the state's constitution.

Burress' group spent $505,526 to pass Issue 3 in 1993 - 21/2 times more than the repeal campaign's predecessor, Equality Cincinnati. The campaigns spent much of that that money on a bitter and sometimes inflammatory contest.

Anti-Issue 3 television advertisements, which compared supporters to Adolf Hitler, Joseph McCarthy and the Ku Klux Klan, backfired. The result was overwhelming: Issue 3 passed, 56,416 (62 percent) to 34,472 (38 percent).

Roxanne Qualls was elected mayor of Cincinnati that same day. Giving a pre-canvass pep talk to volunteers Saturday, she urged them to forget about the divisiveness and finger pointing of that campaign.

"This campaign, this year, is not about a cultural war. This is a campaign about fundamental fairness and equality," she said.

The 12-year battle

Efforts to pass a gay-rights ordinance in Cincinnati have had a complicated history. A recap:

Nov. 25, 1992: Cincinnati City Council adopted the Human Rights Ordinance, which prohibited discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodation against several classes, including homosexuals.

Nov. 2, 1993: Cincinnati voters approved, 62 percent to 38 percent, a charter referendum known as Issue 3 to reverse the council decision. The charter amendment, now known as Article XII, bars the city from conferring "protected class" status based on sexual orientation. Gay-rights groups sued the city six days later, claiming the charter amendment violated their rights.

Aug. 9, 1994: U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel struck down the charter amendment as unconstitutional.

March 8, 1995: City council voted 5-4 to remove sexual orientation from the Human Rights Ordinance.

May 12, 1995: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati overturned Judge Spiegel's ruling, saying gays were not entitled to municipal protection and the amendment violated no one's constitutional rights.

May 20, 1996: U.S. Supreme Court ruled a similar Colorado law is unconstitutional and later ordered a new review of Issue 3 by the 6th Circuit.

Oct. 23, 1997: An unwavering appeals court ruled 3-0 that Issue 3 is constitutional.

Oct. 13, 1998: The U.S. Supreme Court declines further review of Issue 3, meaning the 6th Circuit's decision - and the amendment itself - stands.

Feb. 2, 2004: Mayor Charlie Luken, a former opponent of gay rights, urged the repeal of Issue 3, calling it "unfair and discriminatory."

Feb. 9, 2004: Citizens to Restore Fairness formally kicked off its campaign to repeal Article XII at the Nov. 2, 2004, election.

What Article XII says

"The City of Cincinnati and its various Boards and Commissions may not enact, adopt, enforce or administer any ordinance, regulation, rule or policy which provides that homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, status, conduct, or relationship constitutes, entitled, or otherwise provides a person with the basis to have any claim of minority or protected status, quota preference or other preferential treatment. This provision of the City Charter shall in all respects be self-executing. Any ordinance, regulation, rule or policy enacted before this amendment is adopted that violates the foregoing prohibition shall be null and void and of no force or effect."

In the region

The Covington City Commission passed a human-rights ordinance last year that provides penalties of up to $250 for discrimination based on 13 criteria, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

The city can also suspend a business license or occupancy permit for three or more violations.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com