Cincinnati Enquirer: Chris Seelbach's victory a milestone for gays in Cincinnati

  Newly-elected Chris Seelbach, right, shown with partner Craig Schultz, is the first openly gay member of Cincinnati City Council.

 

The full story with more pictures is here

Chris Seelbach's victory a milestone for gays in Cincinnati

Newly-elected City Council member brings change in perspective

Written by Jane Prendergast

The bar, Milton's Prospect Hill Tavern, was packed for the victory party for the man who'd become Cincinnati's first openly gay City Council member.

People cheered. And it seemed as if everyone on Election Night was offering to buy Chris Seelbach a drink.

Hundreds were celebrating something that older gays and lesbians in Cincinnati thought they might never see.

They remember 1993, when voters passed Article 12, an anti-gay charter amendment that banned any local ordinances based on sexual orientation. Citizens for Community Values had promoted it as "Equal rights, not special rights." It stayed on the books for 11 years until Seelbach helped repeal it in 2004.

"I can't really describe what I was feeling," he says now of facing the huge crowd early Wednesday morning and thanking them for their support. "It was just unbelievably amazing."

Electing the first openly gay council member, others say, means more than the fact that Cincinnati's long-held conservative reputation apparently is evolving.

It also changes the perspective at City Hall and shows other LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals that it's OK to live an authentic life, to show who you really are and still be able to participate in government, said Denis Dison, vice president of communications for the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a Washington nonprofit that promotes LGBT candidates.

"If some gay or lesbian kid in Cincinnati walks into school with their head held a little higher after this," he said, "that's the most important thing."

Voters in Indianapolis and Charlotte elected their first gay city officials Tuesday night also, he said. About 500 of an estimated 500,000 elective offices in the United States are held by LGBT people, Dison said.

Seelbach, who turns 32 today, plans to propose within his first 100 days in office legislation to give health benefits to city employees' same-sex partners. Based on answers the candidates gave during the campaign to The Enquirer about domestic-partner benefits, he should find majority support pretty easily.

"It changes the conversation," said State Rep. Denise Driehaus, D-Clifton Heights, who has known Seelbach for years and was at the party. "He mentioned being the first gay council member and I thought, 'Wow, this is a significant moment.' It was a really powerful moment for Chris."

Not everyone was so thrilled, though.

Phil Burress, president of the conservative Sharonville-based Citizens for Community Values, said Seelbach's election was part of a trend: the city is becoming increasingly liberal. Burress led the Equal Rights, Not Special Rights Committee that originally pushed for Article 12.

"There is a reason why fewer people live in Cincinnati now," he said, noting that six of the nine council members had been endorsed by the Equality Cincinnati PAC, which promotes gay rights.

"Cincinnati residents will be in for a rough ride for the next two years," Burress said, and council will push for "special rights. They tend not to care what the people of Cincinnati want."
 

For Seelbach, the win was particularly sweet after a comment made to his father earlier on Election Day. At a polling place in Mount Airy, a man approached his dad and said, "Your son's a queer."

The younger Seelbach emphasizes that that was the one and only such comment through the entire campaign. He just wishes it hadn't been made to his dad.

"I have witnessed that people really don't care," he said. "But it just feels good to know the man who said that woke up the next day and saw my name in the top nine."