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 Arkansas Gay Adoption Ban Moves Forward
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: October 5, 2007 - 11:00 am ET
(Little Rock, Arkansas) A conservative
Christian group has been given the green light to start collecting signatures
for a voter initiative to bar gays and lesbians from adopting children or
serving as foster parents in Arkansas.
The measure also would prevent unmarried opposite-sex
couples living together from a adopting or fostering.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel
approved the title of the initiative Thursday, after rejecting an earlier
version.
The measure would prevent a child from being
adopted or placed in a foster home "if the individual seeking to adopt or
to serve as a foster parent is cohabiting with a sexual partner outside of a
marriage which is valid under the constitution and laws of this state."
The group behind it, the Arkansas Family Council,
was largely responsible for the passage of an amendment to the Arkansas
Constitution banning gay marriage.
The AFC must collect about 62,000 signatures and
submit them by next July 7.
If the names are validated the measure would
appear on the 2008 ballot.
AFC president Jerry Cox said the organization
will now begin preparing the petitions and start circulating in January.
The adoption referendum is similar to a bill that
died in the Legislature earlier this year.
That legislation failed, after Gov. Mike Beebe
had suggested that there were constitutional problems with the bill, although he
would no say if he intended to veto it if it were passed.
The bill was introduced following a state Supreme
Court ruling last year.
Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board
had established a policy in 1999 that banned gay people from serving as foster
parents, and the Arkansas Supreme Court struck it down after a seven-year legal
battle between the state and the ACLU.
Several state and national child welfare groups
filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the court to strike down the exclusion
because it worked against the best interests of foster children.
In its unanimous ruling, the court said testimony
in the state's appeal demonstrated that "the driving force behind adoption
of the regulations was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster
children but rather based upon the board's views of morality and its bias
against homosexuals."
©365Gay.com 2007
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