By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WHAT THE BALLOT SAYS

Here's the amendment Cincinnati voters will see Nov. 2, under revised ballot language approved Monday by Cincinnati City Council: CHARTER AMENDMENT: To repeal Article XII of the charter of the City of Cincinnati. Be it resolved by the people of Cincinnati that Article XII of the Charter of the city be repealed. This amendment to the city charter shall in all respects be self-executing. Article XII shall be null and void and of no force and effect. Shall Article XII be repealed?

The ballot issue to repeal Cincinnati's Article XII will no longer contain references to "discrimination" or "sexual orientation," after Cincinnati City Council removed the controversial language from the ballot Monday.

City Council voted 7-1 to change the ballot language just 35 minutes before a scheduled court hearing in which conservative activists sought an injunction to keep the words off the ballot. Republican Sam Malone voted no; Republican Pat DeWine was absent.

"Fairness won today," said Phil Burress, the chairman of the pro-Article XII Equal Rights Not Special Rights Committee. Article XII is an 11-year-old charter amendment that prohibits City Council from enacting gay rights laws.

"It just shows the lengths the other side will go to misrepresent this issue. It is not - in capital letters not - about discrimination. And this proves it," Burress said.

Burress and his allies point to the language of Article XII itself, which doesn't mention discrimination but does prohibit "minority or protected status, quota preference or other preferential treatment" for homosexuals.

The intended effect of Article XII, however, was to strike down part of a 1992 Human Rights Ordinance that explicitly prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Monday's action by City Council followed a legal opinion from Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen to the Board of Elections. The opinion advised that the language first proposed by the repeal effort was a "subjective, editorial characterization" of the issue designed more to persuade voters than inform them.

The Campaign to Repeal Article XII, which collected more than twice the 6,771 signatures necessary to put the repeal to the voters, at first wanted the title of the amendment to read:

"To repeal Article XII of the charter of the City of Cincinnati, which prohibits the city from protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation."

The repeal campaign held an emergency meeting with supporters Monday night. The message: that the change in ballot language makes it even more important to educate voters about what Article XII does.

Mayor Charlie Luken, who made the repeal of Article XII a key theme of his State of the City Speech in February, said fighting over ballot language was becoming a distraction.

"At the end of the day, people are going to know what they voted on. I told the (repeal) people, 'You don't want a monthlong court fight on this,'" he said.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com