Drive kicks off to ban foster care by partners
Posted on Friday, January 25, 2008
The chief backer of a proposed law that would exclude unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents kicked off a petition drive Thursday, saying the initiative is necessary in part to “blunt the political agenda” of gay activists.
Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee, said the Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act is needed primarily to protect the welfare of children but also to encourage more people to become foster parents by raising awareness of the need.
“Anyone who tells you that this initiated act is only about gay adoption is not telling you the whole story,” Cox said at a news conference in the state Capitol. “Anyone who will tell you, though, that gay adoption has nothing to do with this act wouldn’t be telling you the whole story, either.” The committee started its petition campaign with the signatures of current and former foster fathers who are on its board of directors — the first of at least 61, 974 Arkansas registered voter signatures the group must gather to qualify the measure for the ballot Nov. 4.
Also Thursday, a coalition of doctors, ministers, children’s advocates and others officially organized to campaign against the proposal. Arkansas Families First filed papers with Secretary of State Charlie Daniels to form a ballot question committee, which is necessary to raise and spend money on the campaign.
Debbie Willhite, the coalition spokesman, said the group’s first goal is to try to persuade Arkansans not to sign the petition the Family Council Action Committee will be circulating among its supporters in churches and elsewhere.
The Family Council Action Committee will seek signatures in its established network of churches and other like-minded groups. The committee is the political wing of the Family Council, the Little Rock nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative Christian causes.
Willhite said her group will counter with a “decline to sign, think before you ink,” campaign through churches, public forums and advertising.
“They’re trying to politicize a nonissue,” she said. “We’re not trying to impugn the good intentions of the Family Council, but we just think they’re wrong on this.” She said the best way to provide safe, secure foster and adoptive care for children is to have trained professionals make the judgments on a case-by-case basis — as is done now — not with a new law restricting who’s eligible.
The proposed law would prohibit a minor 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.” Arkansas Department of Human Services already has a policy in place that excludes cohabiting couples from serving as foster parents. There is no similar restriction on adoptions.
“If the state of Arkansas is going to create families through adoption or foster care, they ought to create good ones,” Cox said.
But the proposal would apply to all adoptions in Arkansas, even private adoptions of children who’ve never been in the state foster care system.
It would still allow a single person — gay or straight — who doesn’t live with a sexual partner to adopt or become a foster parent.
Willhite said the initiated act “defies common sense because it limits the available qualified couples who might otherwise help a child in desperate need.” But Cox said the Family Council Action Committee hopes to expand the pool of foster and adoptive parents as it seeks petition signatures. The group printed 2, 500 copies of a 24-page guide called “Adoption and Foster Care in Arkansas” intended to encourage more married couples to help.
“Our belief is this initiated act will actually increase the number of foster homes and adoptive homes in Arkansas,” Cox said. “I believe the people of Arkansas are always ready to step up and meet a need if they know what the need is, and if they understand how to meet the need.” Willhite said that’s “a wonderful thing” for the Family Council to do. But combining that campaign with a restriction on who can serve is the wrong approach, she said.
Only a few states have similar limitations.
Florida bans homosexuals from adopting. Mississippi doesn’t allow “same-gender” couples to adopt. Nebraska prevents gays from serving as foster parents.
The Arkansas proposal is most like Utah’s, which bans foster care and adoption by unmarried couples.
Thomas said the committee hopes to turn in 100, 000 signatures to Daniels’ office before the July 7 deadline. The same committee gathered more than twice that many in 2004 in support of the state constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage.
That amendment passed by a 3-to-1 margin.
Cox is founder and president of the Family Council and the committee. The committee also will work this year to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing a state lottery.
Willhite is a political consultant who recently moved back to Arkansas, her home state, from Washington, D. C.
Arkansas Families First includes the American Academy of Pediatricians, the Arkansas Association of Social Workers, the Arkansas Psychological Association, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, the Stonewall Democrats, the Inter Faith Council, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and Just Communities of Central Arkansas.
Gov. Mike Beebe has said he opposes the measure because it would create “a rigid, blanket policy” that doesn’t allow full consideration of the circumstances of each child.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
