(Little Rock, Arkansas) A socially conservative group, seeking a ballot measure which would ban unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children in Arkansas, has failed to collect enough valid signatures.

The Arkansas Family Council Action Committee needs 61,974 of the signatures to have the issued placed before voters.

Secretary of State Charlie Daniels’ office certified that 57,888 of the signatures the group submitted in were valid. 

Family Council Executive Director Jerry Cox said he expects to reach the goal.

“In fact, we’ve already been gathering signatures, which is permitted under the law, while they’ve been reviewing them,” Cox told The Arkansas News Bureau.

LGBT rights group Arkansas Families First said it intends to fight the initiative.

The adoption referendum is similar to a bill that died in the Arkansas legislature earlier this year. That legislation failed after Gov. Mike Beebe suggested that there were constitutional problems with the bill, although 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, but the Arkansas Supreme Court struck it down after a seven-year legal battle.  The court declared unanimously 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.”

The Arkansas Family Council was largely responsible for the passage of an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution banning gay marriage.