Burress - Even hypothetical sex is too much for his tortured mind to handle.

CORRECTION: The information presented here pertaining to the "Purple People Bridge," including the quote attributed to Phil Burress, is false. The Cincinnati CityBeat article from which the information was taken turned out to be a work of satire. Free Times apologizes and regrets the error.

The Newport Southbank Bridge spans the Ohio River in southwestern Ohio, connecting Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky. When it was renovated in 2001, planners asked focus-group participants what color it should be. Overwhelmingly, they chose purple, and the structure become known locally as the Purple People Bridge.

Later, some chamber of commerce types came up with the Purple People Bridge Climb, a surprisingly popular tourist attraction that involves hiking across the upper levels of the span in safety gear and purple jumpsuits. More than 80,000 people paid for that experience in the bridge climb's first year, and businesses began springing up on the far side to serve the hungry and thirsty urban trekkers. In Midwestern cities that are not Chicago, results like this qualify as a huge success.

Not to Phil Burress, however. When Burress views the Purple People Bridge, he does not see a reminder of the power of open-mindedness. He sees a dick.

"It's a none-too-subtle monument to the homosexual agenda," he once said, according to Cincinnati CityBeat. "Climbing that bridge is like mounting a giant phallus. Is that what we want people to think of Cincinnati?"

If Burress' name is not familiar to you, his causes are. He heads Citizens for Community Values, which cut its teeth on anti-porn and strip-joint crusades in the Cincinnati area before extending its influence across the state. CCV was the primary force behind the state's anti-gay-marriage amendment passed in 2004 and helped the equally queer-fearful Kenneth Blackwell beat better qualified but less rabid opponents for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Burress' current mission is the state bill that would require strippers to remain at least 6 feet away from their clients. This you've surely heard of — the mainstream media have covered it with a vigilance usually reserved for incidents involving actual sex.

But the big dailies don't often examine Burress' demons, the obsessions and desires that drive him to rid the world of temptations that he can't handle.

In news articles about CCV's pursuits he is often described as a conservative activist or something equally innocuous. But "thrice-married admitted porn addict" would be just as accurate (if less polite), and significantly more telling. Pornography enthralled him for 25 years, he's been quoted as saying, wrecking two marriages and preventing him from completing college and settling on a career. Then, in 1980, a sermon about forgiveness changed him forever, and that felt so good that he soon devoted his life to forcing that same change on everyone else. Today wife number three (supposedly) views porn for him and writes reports, so that he can remain the pure warrior monk he fancies himself to be.

It's impossible to gauge from coverage of him how bright Burress was before trading one addiction for another, but since accepting Jesus as his savior, he's been an endless font of nonsense. Some of his complaints are laughable, like his apparent fear of being bungholed by a purple bridge (and maybe liking it?). But more often the repression-induced bitterness is too obvious to make his absurdities funny.

In 2000, Burress wrote to the Republican National Committee about openly gay Congressman Jim Kolbe, who'd spoken at the Republican convention on the safely unsexy topic of trade. Burress was so outraged (aroused?) by this that he demanded Kolbe's arrest upon return to Arizona.

"He engages in sodomy," Burress wrote, according to Cincinnati CityBeat. "Did you know that in Arizona, sodomy is against the law? Mr. Kolbe should be arrested when he returns to his home state for violating state law."

Even hypothetical sex, possibly taking place hundreds of miles away, is too much for Burress' tortured mind to handle.

And so his words are often strikingly similar in tone to the mutterings of the disheveled psychotics who sleep on the streets downtown. In fact, the only real difference between him and them is that there's not much money in ranting about government-sponsored mind control or aliens. Sex, on the other hand, weirds out many, enough at least to allow Burress to make a living off it (more than $150,000 in 2005, according to IRS records — way more than the strippers he'd love to shut down). But listen carefully and it's clear that Burress is a sick man in slick clothes, smiling while struggling to quiet the voices in his head and stirrings in his pants with Bible verses and histrionic quips and self-righteous campaigns.

A movement to revive prohibition would be political uranium, even if spearheaded by a recovering alcoholic. And no coalition of sweet old ladies who lost everything on the slots would make much headway with a call to eradicate gambling. Most of us balance our lives and vices just fine. We can empathize with those whose brains are wired for self-destructive behavior, but we don't really want to lock ourselves in with them.

And yet thrice-married admitted porn addict Phil Burress commands attention and gets results. Granted, no state legislator was willing to introduce his "Community Defense Act," a.k.a. stripper bill. But now that Burress has forced it on them anyway through a petition drive, they're desperately trying to figure out which is worse: voting for an absurd, unnecessary, blatantly unconstitutional bill on a matter that most voters believe is not remotely important, or voting against it and pissing off the obsessive and vindictive Burress.

Astonishingly, they are finding this a difficult choice. Burress turns his own fears — of naked women and gay bridges and his maddeningly untrustworthy mind — into a weapon, and powerful men play along out of fear that he'll turn it on them. That is truly obscene.

flewis@freetimes.com