Homosexual invitation lawful

in some cases, court decides

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COLUMBUS (AP) Ohioans cannot be punished for asking a person to engage in homosexual activity unless that action inflicts injury or is likely to provoke violence, the Ohio Supreme Court said yesterday.

The 6-1 decision reverses an Ohio Court of Appeals (1st District) decision in the case of a Cincinnati man convicted of soliciting on a downtown street.

Kenneth Phipps was arrested Nov. 22, 1976, after he stopped his car and told a man standing on a nearby sidewalk about a sexual act which he later described in more graphic terms.

The stranger, who was a policeman, got into the car.

Phipps was charged under Ohio's importuning statute, which says, "No person shall solicit a person of the same sex to engage in sexual activity with the offender when the offender knows such solicitation is offensive to the other person or is reckless in that regard."

The high court ruled that First Amendment free-speech rights may have been violated, but did not find the statute too vague to be in compliance with the 14th Amendment due process rights:

The case was remanded to the trial court, which was told to determine if Phipps' words

inflicted injury or were likely to provoke a breach of the peace.

The justices gave the municipal court some guidance in determining the criminality of the speech.

The court also ruled that bovine semen and equipment used for collecting and preparing it for distribution is tax exempt.

The court, in a unanimous decision, affirmed a ruling of the state Board of Tax Appeals in the case of Select Sires Inc., of Plain City.

The organization, owned by dairy and beef farmer cooperatives in Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois, raises and maintains bulls that have genetic value because their female offspring produce great amounts of milk.

The tax commissioner had determined that all of Select Sires' semen and equipment was taxable, but the board ruled that only miscellaneous equipment used in the administrative support function can be taxed.

The semen and the equipment used in collecting and preparing it for distribution is exempt because the organization is "clearly engaged in the development of technology to further one facet of agriculture the breeding of dairy cattle to achieve optimum milk production," the court said.