(Little Rock, Arkansas) An organization opposing a ballot measure that would bar gay couples and unmarried opposite-sex couples from adopting or foster children said Wednesday that it is dropping plans to challenge it in court.

“At this time, we’re going to just prepare to have a very, very aggressive campaign against them and beat them,” Debbie Willhite, a spokesperson for the group told KTVH-television.

Last month, the ballot question was certified to go to voters in November after the socially conservative Arkansas Family Council Action Committee submitted 85,389 valid signatures from registered voters – more than 23,000 more valid names than required by law.

The Arkansas Family Council is the same group that spearheaded Arkansas’ constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Arkansas Families First, the group fighting the measure, originally said it would ask the Arkansas Supreme Court to enjoin the initiative, to prevent it from being placed on the ballot.

With the clock ticking to election day it became doubtful the court could hear the case in time.

The adoption referendum is similar to a bill that died in the Legislature earlier this year which failed after Gov. Mike Beebe had suggested that there were constitutional problems with the bill. He would not say if he intended to veto it if it were passed.

Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board 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.”