Cincinnati- As a 14-year-old boy in Cincinnati, Phil Burress found an adult magazine on a sidewalk – an event that hooked him on pornography and paved the way for his personal crusades today.
“It led to a 25-year addiction to and use of pornography. Back then it wasn’t too much of a big deal, but today it’s a serious, serious problem in America,” said Burress, now 62 and president of Citizens for Community Values. He blames pornography for the destruction of his first marriage and leaping into a second marriage for the wrong reasons.
“I know the harm that pornography causes, especially to young people,” he said.
Burress said he broke free of his porn addiction on Sept. 6, 1980, when he went to hear his son-in-law preach.
“That night, I went forward and accepted Christ as my lord and savior and ever since then I’ve strived to be a better person and make things better rather than make things worse,” said Burress, who has been married to his third wife, Vickie, for six years.
Burress took over as Citizens for Community Values’ president in 1991, shortly after the group made national headlines protesting the Robert Mapplethorpe photography exhibit in Cincinnati.
CCV campaigns against pornography, promiscuity, obscenity and other elements it sees as a threat to the moral fabric of society. Burress describes CCV as a nonreligious, nonprofit educational organization that raises about $1.2 million a year from churches and individuals.
The porn shops Burress frequented as a young man are gone from his hometown: Cincinnati has fewer sex-related businesses than just about any other metropolitan area in the country. There are only five strip clubs within a 40-mile radius of Cincinnati, Burress said.
“There’s one thing you don’t see here is strip bars,” Burress said. “I’m not going to take all that credit. It’s a combination of citizens, good elected officials and strong law enforcement. It takes all those things to purge your city of crime and those elements.”
CCV also has a track record of campaigning against what Burress calls the “pro-homosexual agenda.”
In 1993 CCV pushed through a Cincinnati city charter ban on laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination. Now, the group is trying to beat back a repeal attempt on the ban.
Burress is the chief architect of a proposed amendment to Ohio’s constitution that would ban gay marriage and prohibit government from extending certain legal rights to unmarried couples. Through CCV and the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, more than 320,000 signatures were collected to place the amendment before voters on Nov. 2.
Burress, who has four grown daughters and eight grandsons, said homosexuals are attracted to the same sex and they can’t help those feelings. But they chose to engage in homosexual sex and they could walk away from the behavior, he said.
Burress said he isn’t homophobic, he just doesn’t want the 5,000-year-old institution of marriage altered.
“This is not personal with me. It’s a public policy issue. People can live and do what they want. They can have sex with whom they want. It’s none of my business,” he said. “But it’s when they come out in the public square and say because of what I do in the privacy of my own bedroom I want special laws written or I want to change the institution of marriage, that’s where I stand up and say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s talk about this.’ ”
Joe Lacey, a Democratic activist who is campaigning against State Issue One, said Burress does not represent mainstream views in Ohio. And Lacey doesn’t believe Burress’ statement that he isn’t homophobic.
“I don’t buy that because in the same breath he alludes to some homosexual agenda that doesn’t exist,” Lacey said. “He is just trying to return to a time when gay people had no rights and were considered freaks.”
Lacey said even President Bush wouldn’t say in the last debate that homosexuality is a choice. “So, George Bush could possibly be a pro-homosexual activist by the standards of Phil Burress.”