Anti-Gay leader to mobilize legions of "values voters" for Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio

Phil Burress' Cincinnati, Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values goes statewide

On May 2, 2006 Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's controversial Black conservative Secretary of State defeated current Attorney General Jim Petro in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Phil Burress, the head of an Ohio-based political action committee called Citizens for Community Values Action (CCVA), observed that Blackwell -- the candidate his organization backed -- won because of his longtime support for "family values," particularly his backing of Ohio's anti-same sex marriage amendment which passed in 2004. Burress expects Blackwell to defeat his Democratic challenger, Congressman Ted Strickland, and to help get that done he intends to mobilize legions of "values voters."

A few weeks earlier, members of a Cincinnati, Ohio-based group called Equal Rights Not Special Rights (ERNSP - a 501(c)(3) charity), another of Phil Burress' enterprises, marched into the office of Joe Gray, the city's finance director, carrying some 14 to 15 thousand signatures -- twice the number necessary -- from city residents on petitions calling for the repeal of the city's new lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality ordinance. According to a recent report in Gay People's Chronicle, the "city council passed the ordinance last month" but the intervention by ERNSP -- just before it was scheduled to take effect on April 14 -- will force the ordinance onto the November ballot.