Cincinnati, once hotbed of anti-gays, now has an openly gay city councilman

Cincinnati.com:

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.