Jury Selection Focuses on Sex Views : Photographs: Police threaten to charge protesters who engaged in mock sex acts outside Cincinnati courthouse.

Potential jurors were questioned today on their views about homosexuals in the second day of an art gallery’s obscenity trial for displaying Robert Mapplethorpe photographs.

Meanwhile, police said they may file charges against protesters who simulated homosexual acts during a rally at the opening of the case against the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie.

Officers videotaped homosexual and anti-censorship demonstrators as they marched Monday outside the Hamilton County Courthouse and staged a “sex-in,” engaging in mock sex acts in the street.

Sgt. Dave Hall said the leaders of the activist groups at the rally are known to police, so it may not be necessary to rely on the videotapes to identify them.

“We’re still investigating it,” he said. “It’s too early to say that they’re going to file charges for sure.”

Hall said he believed the demonstrators lacked a parade permit to march from the courthouse to Fountain Square and back.

Inside the court of Municipal Judge David Albanese, lawyers continued questioning prospective jurors, focusing on their views about homosexuality, art showing homosexual acts, abortion and AIDS.

The trial involves seven of 175 Mapplethorpe photos displayed at the gallery last spring. Five photos are of men engaged in homosexual acts and two are of children with their genitals displayed.

Barrie and the arts center both face misdemeanor charges of pandering obscenity and using children in nudity-oriented material.

“We’ve been asking questions of the jurors which we hope will shed some light on their involvement in the community, their attitudes toward lifestyles, as well as their knowledge of this particular case and the exhibit,” Marc Mezibov, the gallery’s lawyer, said during a noon recess.

Lawyers conducted lengthy interviews with the first eight of the 50 prospective jurors, and Mezibov said opening statements in the trial may not come until Thursday.

“As a native, it’s embarrassing,” said Cincinnatian Ann Mezibov as she sat in the front row of the courtroom to watch her husband skirmish with the prosecution. “But in my 43 years, I’ve never known it to be any different. Powerful families run this city, and they have a lot of money behind them. These are our roots.”

The Mapplethorpe exhibit was shown in six cities without incident before traveling to Cincinnati.