Cincinnati’s Mayor-Elect Sparks Debate

Just days after voters rejected a homosexual-rights ballot issue, the city’s mayor-elect was deflecting questions about her own sexual orientation.

Callers to a Thursday night radio talk show quizzed City Council member Roxanne Qualls, with one asking: “Did I or did I not vote for a lesbian?”

Qualls, who is single, said the question was inappropriate and she refused to answer.

“It’s not an issue,” she said in an interview after the show. “Questions about private lives of people are really inappropriate and very clearly distract from the pressing issues for the city.”

Rumors began to circulate after Qualls, who supported the homosexual-rights ballot issue that voters rejected Tuesday, appeared the next day at a gay-rights rally.

“We are wonderful,” she said at the time, explaining later that “we” referred to people attending the rally.

The issue never surfaced during the 40-year-old Democrat’s campaign for a second two-year term on the City Council. In Cincinnati, the top vote-getter in the council race becomes mayor, and Qualls won the job with 8% of the vote. The post is largely a ceremonial one; the city manager handles the city’s day-to-day operation.

Pam McMichael of the group Stonewall Cincinnati said her organization endorsed Qualls and 10 other council candidates, but none of the candidates were asked about their sexual orientation.

The city of 364,000 people has wrangled over the issue of homosexuality before. In 1990, city officials prosecuted an art gallery and its director on obscenity charges over a display of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs that included images of homosexual acts. The gallery and director were acquitted.