I know who gets my vote for man of 2009. Will Phillips.

Phillips is ten years old and hopes to be a lawyer in the future (Will,  if I’m still around I’ll be your first client). He’s a smart boy, skipping grades and such, and is comfortable talking about Teddy Roosevelt. He recently decided not to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance when it was recited in his Arkansas elementary school. Why? Because there is a chasm between the words and the rhetoric, especially when gays and lesbians are involved.

“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be  a lawyer,” Phillips said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”

He didn’t come to the decision compulsively off the cuff. Asked his parents, who have many gay friends, if it was against the law not to stand for the pledge. When he got the legal, and parental, okay, in early October he stayed seated as his class stood up. The teacher, a substitute, and Phillips didn’t see eye to eye on this type of civil disobedience and eventually the young Henry David Thoreau was sent to the principal’s office.

So a ten year old boy has decided it’s time to show little solidarity with gays and lesbians. Typically some of his peers are giving him grief, but Phillips  notes many of his classmates have no problem with what he’s doing. And at least for now, he’s not standing up until gays and lesbians are treated as full, and equal, citizens.

Ten years old. What a wonder.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by Lambda Legal on behalf of 75–year–old Rev. Dr. Robert Franke, a retired university provost and Unitarian-Universalist minister, and his daughter, Sara Franke Bowling. 

Lambda said that Franke, who relocated to Little Rock to be closer to his daughter, moved in to Fox Ridge of North Little Rock, an assisted living facility, after fulfilling all of its residency requirements — including submission of medical evaluation forms from a local physician.  

The next day, however, after realizing Dr. Franke is HIV-positive, Fox Ridge officials abruptly ejected Franke from the facility, according to the lawsuit.

A Fox Ridge staffer allegedly told Bowling her father’s personal belongings could remain, but that the “body” had to be out by the end of the day. 

“I was stunned that my dad was thrown out of his new home,” said Bowling in a statement. 

“The people at Fox Ridge were supposed to make sure that he was comfortable and cared for, and instead they shunned and rejected him, making him feel like a complete outcast.”

Dr. Franke requires no special medical attention beyond daily medication and regular check–ups with a physician, and Fox Ridge is licensed by the state to provide Dr. Franke with the kind of care he and his daughter were seeking for him, Lambda said. 

“Federal and state laws exist to protect people from just this sort of unjust treatment,” said Scott Schoettes, HIV Project staff attorney for Lambda Legal.

“Unfortunately, this is something we are seeing far too frequently, all across the country. Those tasked with caring for our elderly loved ones need to know that it is illegal to discriminate against someone with HIV based on outdated and misguided beliefs about its transmission.”

Franke and Bowling are seeking damages under the Fair Housing Act, the Arkansas Civil Rights Act and the Arkansas Fair Housing Act, as well as an injunction, under those laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act, preventing Fox Ridge from continuing to engage in this kind of conduct.

“This is about doing the right thing,” said Franke.  “I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else — because no one should ever be made to feel the way I did.”

KnowThyNeighbor.org has posted the names of 83,000 Arkansas citizens who signed the anti-gay adoption and foster care petition in 2008.

“This is about responsibility and dialogue,” said Tom Lang, the director of the Massachusetts-based KnowThyNeighbor. 

“These petition signers need to stand behind their signatures and be responsible for this dehumanizing attack on the gay community. It’s disgraceful that they have chosen to exercise their prejudice at the expense of children who are now being denied access to loving adoptive and foster parents. Such activity must be challenged and cannot be allowed to pass under the cover of darkness.”

The group previously has posted online the names of over a half million anti-gay petition signers in Massachusetts and Florida.

The group behind the amendment said Wednesday that it will ask the Arkansas Legislature to pass a law prohibiting the release of petition signers’ “personal information.”

“If Arkansas doesn’t have a law prohibiting the release of petitionsigners’ personal information, we will ask the Arkansas Legislature to pass such a law next session,” said Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council Action Committee in a press release.

“This would provide equal protection to any voters who sign a ballot petition, regardless of the cause.”

But Lang defends the publication of the names saying it will lead to a dialogue between gays and opponents of gay rights.

“These conversations can be uncomfortable for both parties,” said Lang, “but they are desperately needed. 

“The more that gays and lesbians talk about the importance of their relationships and their love for their children, the faster stereotypes break down and both sides begin to realize how much they have in common.”

Although the law bans both unmarried opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples from adopting or fostering LGBT rights advocates argue the law is particularly harsh for same-sex couples who are banned from marrying in Arkansas.

In a hearing Tuesday on the state application to dismiss the lawsuit, Arkansas Deputy Attorney General Justin Allen argued that no one has a basic right to to adopt or be adopted.

Allen claimed that because intrinsic rights are not involved, the lawsuit cannot be challenged on constitutional grounds.

The ACLU disputed the claim and said the lawsuit should be allowed to continue, arguing that the law violates the federal and state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process.

The law’s ban affects both same-sex couples already prevented from marrying in Arkansas and opposite-sex couples who live together but are not married.

In its argument, the ACLU said that the law is particularly harsh for same-sex couples.

“With respect to gay and lesbian cohabiting couples, there is no rational relationship between Act 1 and promoting marriage because same-sex couples are legally precluded from marrying under Arkansas law,” the ACLU said in its suit. “Thus, there is no incentive to marry that could possibly result in gay couples marrying in the state.”

Allen disagreed, saying that the state regularly removes children from a biological parent when that parent is living with another adult and they are not married. Allen said the law is applied evenly to unmarried opposite-sex couples and to same-sex couples.

Among the couples involved in the lawsuit are Stephanie Huffman, who already adopted one child from the state in 2004 and her partner of 10 years, Wendy Rickman.

They want to adopt another child or a pair of siblings through the Department of Children and Family Services, but can’t because of the ban, which went into effect January 1.

The national organization said that it has received at least 75 inquiries about starting new chapters in communities across the country since Election Day.

PFLAG, which already boasts nearly 500 chapters and affiliates across the country, said it is working with local allies who have expressed interest in bringing the organization to their communities.

California, Florida and Arizona passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in November. Arkansas voters approved a law barring gays from adopting or fostering children.

The critically acclaimed “Milk” profiles the election of Harvey Milk to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming one of the earliest gay politicians.  He was assassinated a year later. “Prayers for Bobby” tells the true story of Mary Griffith , a PFLAG mother’s journey from rejecting her gay son to becoming an advocate for LGBT rights.

“If there is a silver lining to the set-back our families experienced on Election Day , it is that our allies in communities across the country have started to mobilize at the local level and work for change,” said Jody M. Huckaby , PFLAG’s national executive director.

“New PFLAG chapters are forming in critically important districts and existing PFLAG chapters in many communities are reporting an increase in their membership. Today, our families, allies and loved ones are organizing and pressing for change as they never have before.”

Huckaby said that PFLAG national headquarters has received inquiries about starting new chapters in states such as Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio , Florida, California, Utah, Texas and Idaho, among others.

In Texas, a half-dozen people have expressed an interest in organizing a local PFLAG presence and at least four inquiries have come from California, where many community leaders are working to rally allies in the wake of Proposition 8’s passage. The national office has also heard from organizers in Tennessee, Missouri, South Dakota, New York and New Jersey.

In Indiana, local allies have organized a new PFLAG chapter in Terre Haute .

County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza dismissed a motion by Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to dismiss the suit. Piazza then accepted an application by  the Arkansas Family Council to enter the case.

The council was behind the successful ballot measure past last November that bans unmarried couples from adopting or fostering. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas filed suit, challenging the constitutionality of the law on behalf of a dozen families, some straight, some gay.

In its application to enter the case, the council said it did not believe the Attorney General’s office would vigorously defend the law, but that the council itself had a special interest in defending the measure.

Piazza agreed to allow the group to join the suit, but said his ruling should not be viewed as a reflection of how he felt about the ability of the Attorney General’s department to handle the case.

In papers filed with the court, the ACLU said  that the law violates the federal and state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process.

Although the law bans both unmarried opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples from adopting or fostering, the ACLU argues that the law is particularly harsh for same-sex couples.

“With respect to gay and lesbian cohabiting couples, there is no rational relationship between Act 1 and promoting marriage because same-sex couples are legally precluded from marrying under Arkansas law,” the brief said. “Thus, there is no incentive to marry that could possibly result in gay couples marrying in the state.”

Voters approved the ban last November.  The families involved in the legal challenge are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas. The case is before Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Chris Piazza, but Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel in January asked Piazza to dismiss the suit.

In his motion, McDaniel argued that the state has an interest in preserving marriage.

In its reply, the ACLU disputes the claim. It argues that the law violates the federal and state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process.

“This law hurts families and children in many ways – it takes away parents’ right to decide for themselves who will adopt their children if they die, it denies the many children in Arkansas state care a chance at the largest possible pool of potential foster and adoptive homes, and denies couples who are living together but unmarried the chance to provide loving homes to children who desperately need them,” said Rita Sklar, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arkansas.

The law’s ban affects both same-sex couples already prevented from marrying in Arkansas and opposite-sex couples who live together but are not married.

In its submission to the court, the ACLU argues that the law is particularly harsh for same-sex couples.

“With respect to gay and lesbian cohabiting couples, there is no rational relationship between Act 1 and promoting marriage because same-sex couples are legally precluded from marrying under Arkansas law,” the brief said. “Thus, there is no incentive to marry that could possibly result in gay couples marrying in the state.”

Among the couples involved in the lawsuit are Stephanie Huffman, who already adopted one child from the state in 2004 and her partner of 10 years, Wendy Rickman.

They want to adopt another child or a pair of siblings through the Department of Children and Family Services, but now can’t because of Act 1.

“The state already knows we’re good enough parents that they placed one child with us before Act 1 passed,” said Huffman. “Who knows how many children are now cut off by this law from loving homes?”

Judge Piazza has not indicated when he might rule on the state’s application to have the lawsuit thrown out.

Meanwhile, activists are watching legislative calendars in the event battles over gays adopting children ignites in other states this year.

They wonder: Will a recent victory for gays seeking to adopt in Florida deter an escalation of the fight on the part of conservatives?  Or will a recent victory for conservatives seeking to prevent gays from adopting inspire more skirmishes?

“It’s really hard to tell; it’s so early,” said Paul Cates, director of public education for the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT Project. “Most state legislatures are just going back into session.”

“Oftentimes,” said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council headquartered in Boston, “politicians propose these anti-family pieces of legislation just before the filing deadlines to avoid public scrutiny — a classic example of playing politics with people’s lives.”

Based on her best “educated guess,” Chrisler suggested watching Midwestern and Southern states, especially South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

In 2006, gay rights activists saw anti-gay adoption pushes in 16 states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia. The legislative fight resumed and failed in Tennessee last year.

“What fives me a little pause now is the Tennessee Legislature is controlled by Republicans,” Cates said.

Adoption is an issue decided state-by-state, often on a case-by-case basis.

Nebraska does not allow second-parent or co-parent adoptions. Mississippi bars same-sex couples from adopting. Utah bars unmarried, cohabitating couples — gay or straight — from adopting. Arkansas, by popular vote in November 2008, also bars cohabitating couples — gay or straight – from adopting. Florida is the only state to explicitly ban gays and lesbians from adopting children.

Florida owes its law banning gays from adopting children to an early emergence of Christian right power, that of Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children crusade in 1977.

Bryant led a campaign to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance that fueled legislative interest in the anti-gay adoption law, which specifically states, “No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual.”

Florida someday may owe the repeal of that law to a gay couple, their sons, their attorneys, an abundance of science on parenting and an informed judiciary.

A lawsuit seeking to overturn the 1977 statute is making its way through Florida’s state courts.

In the suit, being handled by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, Frank Martin Gill wants the right to adopt the two foster care boys he and his partner have raised since 2004, along with a third son.

After a four-day trial, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Cindy Lederman ruled in Gill’s favor Nov. 25, 2008, just a few weeks after Arkansas voters approved Act 1 to bar gay adoptions. Lederman wrote, “Sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person’s ability to parent. A child in need of love, safety and stability does not first consider the sexual orientation of his parent.”

Removed from the custody of their biological parents and an environment perilous to their physical, emotional and educational well being, the boys in Gill’s care “now flourish,” according to their trial judge.

The victory for gays in Florida’s courtroom and the loss for gays in Arkansas’ ballot box followed a pattern often seen in the fight over marriage.

The group that spearheaded the ballot campaign in Arkansas, the Family Council Action Committee, is a statewide grassroots organization associated with Focus on the Family and James Dobson.

The Arkansas campaign for Act 1 put out the message that the anti-gay measure “put kids first,” and its passage “blunts the gay agenda.”

A campaign flier distributed prior to the Nov. 4, 2008, vote stated, “Children should never be used to advance a political agenda. Arkansas has no law to prevent adoptive or foster children from being placed with homosexual couples. Act One prevents gay activists from using Arkansas children to advance their agenda.”

Focus on the Family has the organizational system and the experience to escalate an assault on gay adoptions. The organization gained a national reputation and nationwide clout with its anti-gay ballot drive in Colorado in 1992 and has affiliates around the country.

A flurry of statements and op-ed pieces from Christian right organizations about the need for children to have both a father and a mother and the need to “halt the gay agenda” followed the Arkansas vote.

But conservative organizations aren’t reading enthusiasm for a big battle over gay adoptions in public opinion polls or counting inspiration in campaign contributions.

Nationwide polls show that a plurality of Americans think gays should be allowed to legally adopt children and a minority believe otherwise. In Arkansas, less than a month before the vote, a survey by the University of Arkansas found 55 percent of voters opposed to the ban.

Also, organizations seeking to ban marriage equality in California, Florida and Arizona generated big money for ballot initiatives last year — about $50 million — but the Family Council and Family Council Action Committee struggled to generate cash and even reported a campaign debt last spring.

“I don’t think it was the home run they were thinking it might be,” Cates said of the Arkansas ballot drive.

Chrisler said, “I wonder how tired people are of being asked to act and give out of fear for something they are beginning to see as nothing to be scared about.”

For various reasons, those involved in protecting or securing adoption rights for gays do not expect the issue to become a full-fledged war with battles waged in 50 states or in Congress.

“Conservative forces in this country may continue to push foster and adoption bans like the one in Arkansas in an effort to replicate their strategy around marriage bans, but the issues are quite different,” Chrisler said. “Most Americans understand and believe that decisions about adoption and foster care are best left in the hands of professional social workers, adoption placement agencies and objective judges.”

Statutes or appellate court decisions allowing same-sex couples or second-parent adoptions exist in 13 states and the District of Columbia and courts in 15 other states have issued orders that uphold gay adoption rights.

“The fact that we are having to have this fight in a few states doesn’t reflect the fact that the vast majority of this country is with us,” said ACLU of Florida attorney Robert Rosenwald, who represents the Gill family.

He described the efforts to ban gays from adopting as “the last desperate act of people who want to reserve family to fit their own definition” — and an effort that is not supported by scientific or legal arguments.

In cases involving children, science is important and the opinions of child welfare experts carry a lot of weight.

In the Gill case, the judge observed that the fact that parental sexual orientation has no impact on children’s well-being has “been accepted, adopted and ratified by” the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America and the National Association of Social Workers.

“We have a factual record based on science,” Rosenwald said.

The judge went on to point out the dubious testimony from the state’s experts who offered pseudo-science and religious opinion.

“We are in a child-welfare crisis,” Cates said. “And there is no denying the fact that gay people are capable of providing good homes.… It is hard for people to put aside the needs of children.”

While it is unclear whether adoption fights will develop in other states, the fights in Arkansas and Florida likely will continue for some time.

The ACLU only filed its case against Arkansas’ Act 1 in December alleging the measure violates federal and state constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.

In Florida, the Third District Court of Appeals recently turned down the ACLU’s request that Lederman’s ruling, appealed by the Florida Attorney General’s Office, go directly to the state supreme court for consideration.

Rosenwald estimated the case might take three years to reach a legal conclusion.

“It will be a historical moment if we can successfully persuade the Florida courts to finally abandon this law,” Cates said. “It will be a great moment.”

Meanwhile, John and James Doe, the foster care children Martin Gill wants to permanently adopt, will remain in Gill’s home, living what Rosenwald described as a “great life.”

The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of the families in Pulaski County Circuit Court seeking to overturn Act 1, which was approved by voters in November.

“Act 1 violates the state’s legal duty to place the best interest of children above all else,” said Marie-Bernarde Miller, a Little Rock attorney in the lawsuit.

The group sued on behalf of 29 adults and children from more than a dozen families, including a grandmother who lives with her same-sex partner of nine years and is the only relative able and willing to adopt her grandchild, who is now in Arkansas state care.

The plaintiffs also include Stephanie Huffman and Wendy Rickman, a lesbian couple raising two sons together and who want to adopt a foster child from the state.

“It’s just wrong. It’s an injustice,” said Huffman, who lives in Conway. “I’m being denied an opportunity to provide a home for a special-needs child.”

The families claim that the act’s language was misleading to voters and that it violates their constitutional rights. The lawsuit was filed against the state of Arkansas, the attorney general, the Arkansas Department of Human Services and its director, and the Child Welfare Agency Review Board and its chairman.

The Arkansas Family Council, a conservative group that campaigned for the ban, said it was aimed at gay couples but that the law will affect heterosexuals and gays equally.

Jerry Cox, the council’s president, said he had expected a lawsuit to be filed if the measure passed.

“We are confident this lawsuit will fail and Act 1 will remain on the books,” Cox said.

Rita Sklar, ACLU Arkansas’ executive director, said the group filed the suit before the law took effect January 1.

Department of Human Services officials have said they do not expect to remove any foster children from their homes. The state had already barred cohabiting unmarried couples from becoming foster parents and was in the process of reversing that policy when voters approved the new ban.

The law does not affect any adoptions that were finalized before 2009.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said during the fall campaign that he opposed the act. Chief Deputy Attorney General Justin Allen said that McDaniel’s office will defend the act in court. Before the election, McDaniel said he was confident the act could withstand any court challenge aimed at knocking it off the ballot.

“It’s the office of the attorney general’s constitutional duty to defend the agencies of the state and constitutionality of state laws regardless of the personal or political belief of the officeholder himself,” Allen said.

The ACLU had represented four plaintiffs in a lawsuit that led the state Supreme Court to overturn the state’s ban on gay foster parents in 2006. The Family Council had campaigned for the initiated act in response to that ruling.

The lawsuit challenging Act 1 was assigned to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox, who had initially overturned the gay foster parent ban.

The ACLU’s suit notes that the council had pushed for the new law as part of a campaign to blunt a so-called “gay agenda,” but the restriction affects heterosexual and gay couples equally.

About 300 people gathered at the Capitol to denounce the ban, known as Act 1 and approved Nov. 4 by voters.  Act 1 does not have the power of a constitutional amendment, but does change state law to make fostering and adoption by unmarried people illegal.

A two-thirds vote by the legislature could overturn it.

Protesters carried signs saying “Kids need loving homes: Repeal Act 1.” The rally was organized by a number of LGBT rights groups.

Among the speakers was Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Wendell Griffen who said Act 1 ties the hands of judges to the detriment of children in state care.

“In the name of justice I am here to ask you to say to legislatures please respect the judges that the people of Arkansas have elected to do their job,” he said.

Griffen, who also is a pastor, drew on Biblical references to criticize Act 1, referencing Jesus and Naomi and Ruth from the Old Testament, saying “[none of them] would be allowed to foster or adopt a child according to Act 1.”

Act 1 passed by 57 percent of votes. The voter initiative was organized by the socially conservative group behind the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Although it does not specifically mention same-sex couples, Act 1’s target was gay pairs and grew out of a controversial 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.