August 27, 2008

Arkansas Gay Adoption Ban Goes to Ballot

By Chase Martin

Arkansas Secretary of State Charlie Daniels certified the proposed act aimed at effectively banning gays and lesbians from becoming foster or adoptive parents clearing it to appear on the fall ballot in Arkansas. The Arkansas Family Council Action Committee submitted 96,911 valid signatures of registered voters, more than the 61,974 valid signatures needed. The measure is very similar to a bill that went through the Arkansas legislature in 2007. Senate bill 959 was passed in the state Senate only to die later in the Arkansas House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee.

The proposed act would prohibit a child from being adopted or placed in a foster home in which a would-be parent is “cohabiting with a sexual partner outside of a marriage which is valid under the constitution and laws of this state.” The measure would take the place of current state policy that bars unmarried couples living together from serving as foster parents that the state Supreme Court struck down last year. While the current state policy doesn’t apply to adoptions, the proposed act would extend the ban to bar unmarried couples from adopting as well. Utah is the only other state currently with such a ban.

If the proposed act passes in November, a parent who wants their child to be raised by a particular family member or close family friend in the event of the parent’s death has no certainty that those wishes would be carried out. If the family member is cohabitating, the child will not be placed with that known, trusted adult. A child in foster care living with the aunt and her boyfriend of 20 years would have to be taken out of the family and placed with strangers no matter how bonded the child was to his aunt or how well he was thriving in her care. A child with serious medical needs could not be placed in foster care or adoption with a doctor who lives with an unmarried partner even if that doctor is the only person willing and able to take care of the child.

Rita Sklar, executive director of the Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that several organizations, including the ACLU, the Arkansas chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, among others, have formed a committee called Arkansas Families First to oppose the Family Council’s proposal. ‘This is such a heinous law for the children who need loving parents,’ Arkansas Families First spokeswoman Debbie Willhite said, adding that the measure would reduce the number of people eligible to adopt or foster children in the state.

Aimee Berry, executive director of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “We want to make sure that every ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ is crossed because this would be such a bad thing for children that we just can’t leave any stone unturned.” Berry said the state should be expanding the pool of prospective parents rather than shrinking it. “We need to be looking at ways to increase the number of foster homes and adoptive homes and not discriminate on sexual orientation or marital status,” she said. She said decisions on who can or cannot adopt should be left up to those trained to do so, such as social workers and juvenile judges.

A statement released by the Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families supported “the need, as is the consensus among other state child welfare agencies and the Child Welfare League of America, that the Division of Children and Family Services, Arkansas Department of Human Services, should have the responsibility and flexibility to decide which foster and adoptive homes are most appropriate for each child’s placement on a case-by-case basis.” According to the statistical report for the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services, in 2006 there were 6,835 children in foster care in Arkansas.

The measure faces the threat of a lawsuit from groups who say that it unfairly discriminates against unmarried couples and limits the number of foster and adoptive homes available for children. Arkansas Families First is campaigning against the measure and has said it plans to file a lawsuit to keep it from appearing on the November ballot. The suit would argue the proposal’s ballot title is misleading, the proposal is unconstitutional, and its petition lacks the required number of registered voter signatures, Willhite said. The group has found signatures that should have been rejected by the state as invalid and that the group also plans to challenge the constitutionality of the measure. ‘We’re going to work very hard to defeat this because it is just bad policy for children,’ Willhite said. Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel opposes the proposed measure but said last week that he believed it could survive a legal challenge.

The Family Council campaign started as a response to a 2006 Arkansas Supreme Court decision striking down a state policy that specifically banned gays and lesbians from becoming foster parents. In that 7-0 decision, the court struck down the policy saying, ‘There is no correlation between the health, welfare and safety of foster children and the blanket exclusion of any individual who is a homosexual or who resides in a household with a homosexual.’ The court went on to note that the Child Welfare Agency Review Board, which established the policy, was motivated “not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children but rather [was] based upon the board’s views of morality and its bias against homosexuals.”

“Arkansas needs to affirm the importance of married mothers and fathers,” Family Council President Jerry Cox said. “We need to publicly affirm the gold standard of rearing children whenever we can. The state standard should be as close to that gold standard of married mom and dad homes as possible.” Cox said the Family Council will rely on support from the same network of churches that helped it pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2004. That amendment passed with 75 percent of the vote.

According to a 2005 poll of 800 people conducted by the University of Arkansas, 65% said they approved of allowing a lesbian or gay man to adopt a child if the court found that person fit in all other ways to become an adoptive parent.

Related links:

ACLU of Arkansas

Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families

Arkansas Families First

Read the Proposed Initiated Act at the Arkansas Secretary of State’s website

Related articles:

Poll: 53 Percent of Arkansans Are Homophobic Bigots
Lavender Newswire, October 31, 2007

Arkansans Hating Gays A Little Less This Year (But They Still Hate Our Families Even More Than They Hate Undocumented Aliens)
Lavender Newswire, July 8, 2008

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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