Group shifts strategy over adoption ban
Posted on Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The group opposing an effort to ban certain people from being foster and adoptive parents won’t sue to keep the proposed ban off the Nov. 4 ballot, its spokesman said Tuesday.
Debbie Willhite, a consultant for Arkansas Families First, last month said that the group “absolutely” would file a legal challenge.
But she said Tuesday the group changed its mind to focus, instead, on defeating the proposed ban with a public-relations campaign.
“The attorney general has made it very clear that he feels very secure about defending [the measure in court ],” Willhite said. “It would be a costly court battle and would tie up our funds we need to defeat the measure.”
Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel has said he’ll vote against it but last month added that he felt confident he could successfully defend the wording of the proposal’s ballot title in court. The title is what voters see on the ballot.
Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council, which is pushing the proposed initiated act to ban unmarried cohabiting couples from becoming foster and adoptive parents, said the group did everything it could to have a legal proposal.
“We put together a proposal we felt was as bulletproof as it could possibly be,” Cox said. “Frankly, we thought we would be challenged in court. I’m glad the people of Arkansas will have a chance to vote on this.”
Willhite said last month that Steve Lancaster, a Little Rock lawyer, would have worked on the case for free.
But she said Tuesday that extra costs would have been incurred by her group if it had challenged the signatures on the petition that was submitted to place the proposal on the ballot. She said that the group would have had to pay to get affidavits from the council’s signature gatherers.
She felt it would be “very, very difficult” to invalidate enough signatures to get it off the ballot. The secretary of state’s office had already approved the signatures as being signatures of registered Arkansas voters.
Regarding the measure’s ballot title, “we didn’t think we could win that one,” especially given McDaniels’ statement, she said. She has described the ballot title as misleading and unconstitutional but said that Lancaster said a lawsuit would be difficult to win.
On Aug. 25, the council’s petition signatures were certified by the secretary of state’s office, exceeding the 61, 974 signatures required by the state constitution for initiated acts. The council had 85, 389 affirmed.
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.”
The Arkansas Constitution declares that marriage shall be only between one man and one woman, thus barring homosexual “marriages.”
The Arkansas Department of Human Services already has a policy that excludes cohabiting couples from serving as foster parents. There is no similar restriction on adoptions.
The proposal would apply to all adoptions in Arkansas, including private adoptions of children who’ve never been in the state foster-care system.
It would still allow a single person, regardless of sexual orientation who doesn’t live with a sexual partner, to adopt or become a foster parent.
The council contends that children should be raised in traditional-type family settings. Opponents say that it would be unfair to homosexuals and that more foster and adoptive parents are needed for children.
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