Anti-Gay Former 'Porn Addict' Sets Sights on Adult Businesses, Gay Adoption

After enshrining anti-marriage equality discrimination into the Ohio constitution, the group Citizens for Community Values didn't pack up their files and go home. They set their sights on another time-honored social institution: porn.

Led by self-described former "porn addict" Phil Burress, Citizens for Community Values, having gotten a vote on the civil rights of GLBT Ohioans on the 2004 ballot and inscribed what is reportedly "the nation's most restrictive ban on same-sex marriage."

At least, that's how Columbus Dispatch columnist Ann Fisher described the amendment in her Apr. 16 essay on Burress and his group's plans to impose a curfew on the hours that adult bookstores and adult clubs can operate.

Wrote Fisher, "I agree with perhaps every criticism there is against smut and the sexploits of strip clubs, but I'd rather know the enemy by the light of day."

Added the columnist, "My personal anti-pornography point of view--if you don't like it, don't look at it--probably doesn't stand a chance against Phil Burress, however."

Burress, reported Fisher, got his "social engineering" start with an attempt, in 1990, to see a conviction brought against the director of an art museum in Cincinnati for having put seven photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe on display.

Mapplethorpe, an openly gay photographer, created images that were hailed as beautiful by the art community, but reviled as "homosexual" in theme, or as homoerotic "pornography" by politicians.

Fisher pointed out that Ohio already had laws in place that allow local governments to regulate the hours of operation of adult establishments. However, Ohio also had a law prohibiting marriage equality when Citizens for Community Values spearheaded the drive to place the voters' initiative on the 2004 ballot, leading to the anti-gay amendment to the state's constitution.

On a more practical note, Fisher noted, "It might irk the righteous and tempt the weak, but legal adult entertainment generates millions of tax dollars a year in Ohio."

But porn in bookstores and lap-dances may not be the group's ultimate motivation with the new push for a ballot initiative. Wrote Fisher, "Talk around the Statehouse is that this latest bone to be picked is just a springboard for yet another gaybashing blitzkrieg, this time aimed at gay adoptions."

Wondered Fisher, "Could another ballot issue be next? Do I hear an echo?"

Burress has long involved himself with city-level politics. Aside from the failed attempt to garner a conviction against the art museum for the Mapplethorpe photos, Burress' group Equal Rights Not Special Rights led a petition-driven charge to demand that Cincinnati repeal an ordinance extending anti-discrimination protections to the city's GLBT community, reported a May, 2006 article posted at MediaTransparency.org.

In 1993, Burress' group had managed to get the inclusion of GLBT people expunged from an exiting anti-discrimination city ordinance, the MediaTransparency story said.

The MediaTransparency story cited The Gay People's Chronicle, which said that Burress had been "behind almost every anti-gay effort in Ohio."

But CCV has long made adult bookstores and adult clubs the objects of its crusades, MediaTransparency reported, and Burress has been employed full-time by CCV, which paid him $165,000 in 2004.

The group has also launched fights against Internet pornography and the availability of on-demand pornography in hotels, and Burress created a PAC to support the campaigns of "family values" politicians--assuming, that is, that the families those politicians support are heterosexual.

The MediaTransparency article recounted Burress' self-described battle with pornography "addiction," and the moment when Burress became "born again."

The article cited an earlier item written about Burress in a publication from anti-gay organization Focus on the Family.

In that article, MediaTransparency said, Burress claimed to be "totally obsessed" with pornography.

"So when someone asks me about the harm porn causes, I can answer," the article reported Burress as saying.

"Porn teaches you to use, abuse and take--that's how it changed my view of women."

"Every man who's used porn or been hooked on porn knows I tell the truth," the quote attributed to Burress continued.

After becoming born again, Burress left porn behind and took up the cause of stripping GLBT Americans of their rights.

The CCV Web site, the MediaTransparency article said, includes text that says that CCV looks "to promote Judeo-Christian moral values, and to reduce destructive behaviors contrary to those values, through education, active community partnership, and individual empowerment at the local, state and national levels."

Calling itself a "First Amendment free speech organization," CCV claims to have rid the sales of pornographic magazines from almost all retail outlets around Cincinnati.

Equal Rights not Special Rights, meantime, has found yet another creative way to use the First Amendment to its advantage: by refusing to follow the state law requiring those who circulate petitions to "file an itemized statement, made under penalty of election falsification, showing in detail" funding sources, as well as "full names and addresses of all persons to whom such payments or promises were made," according to The Gay People's Chronicle.

But ERNSR has refused to comply, stating in April of 2006 only that it spent $40,000, but then asserting "a First Amendment right not to disclose the rest of the information," the Gay People's Chronicle said.

Reported the Gay People's Chronicle, "That statement was signed by David Miller, who is acting as ERNSR's agent. He is also vice president of Citizens for Community Values, another of Burress' anti-gay organizations," according to the MediaTransparency article.

MediaTransparency then cited Gary Wright, the chairman of Citizens to Restore Fairness, a GLBT advocacy group, who, the Gay People's Chronicle reported, filed a complaint against Burress together with Cincinnati mayor Bobbi Sterne, and asserted that Burress had used CCV to "launder" up to $3 million in funds that were then funneled toward the anti-gay marriage amendment.

Said the Gay People's Chronicle, "The Ohio Elections Commission took no action."

MediaTransparency quoted Gay People's Chronicle reporter Eric Resnick, who told MediaTransparency, "[CCV] has never been held accountable or made to explain the way they fund campaigns. The truth is, they have been getting away with stuff for many years."

Added Resnick, "There are huge amounts of money being laundered through those charities and somehow making their way to these campaigns--possibly as much as $3 million dollars."

Questions of proper procedures did, however, derail the last attempt Burress' group made to put an initiative against adult bookstores and clubs on the ballot. According to an Oct. 31, 2007 Columbus Dispatch article the ballot initiative had about 60,000 signatures less than it needed to make it legally to the ballot.

But because the state Supreme Court might have addressed the issue and allowed the ballot initiative to go forward, Burress sent last-minute emails to instruct the group's followers to vote in favor of the measure, despite the likelihood that those votes would not count for anything.