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   By JOHN NOLAN
 Associated Press Writer
   CINCINNATI (AP) -- 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 Councilwoman Roxanne
Qualls, with one asking: "Did I or did I not vote for a lesbian?"
   Ms. Qualls said the question was inappropriate and 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 Ms. 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 Ms. Qualls won the job with just 8 percent
of the vote.
   The post is largely a ceremonial one; the city manager handles the city's
day-to-day operation.
   The city of 364,000 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.
   The same year, police arrested two men for holding hands in a parked car in
a city park. Disorderly conduct charges were dropped.
   Pam McMichael of the group Stonewall Cincinnati said her organization
endorsed Ms. Qualls, who is single, and 10 other council candidates, but none
of the candidates were asked about their sexual orientation.
   "We are very clear that our agenda is to make Cincinnati a fair and equal
place for all of its citizens," Ms. McMichael said. "There's no hidden agenda
here."
   Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values and chairman of Equal Rights,
Not Special Rights, the coalition that opposed the ordinance, said Ms. Qualls
"is perfectly qualified to be a mayor."
   But he warned that "if she continues to promote the homosexual agenda
through being a mayor ... if she passes another law, we'll be back on the
ballot. City Council's the one that forced the issue, not us."
   Ms. Qualls was one of seven council members who voted for the human rights
ordinance in November 1992. Two members voted against it.
   She bristled when told of his comments.
   "Neither myself nor anybody on council is promoting anyone's agenda," she
said. "All we did when we passed the human rights ordinance was put an
anti-discrimination law on the books."