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Group revises ballot item to ban adoption, foster parenting by gays Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Less than a month after the state attorney general approved the wording of a proposed ballot initiative to ban unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents, the initiative's supporters submitted a revised version of the measure Wednesday. "We're just looking to do the very best proposal possible," Jerry Cox, director of the conservative group Family Council, said after submitting the revised proposal to Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's office. Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday he remains opposed to the proposal, regardless of the wording change. Cox said the new version includes the statement, "The people of Arkansas find and declare that it is in the best interest of children in need of adoption or foster care to be reared in homes in which adoptive or foster parents are not cohabiting outside of marriage." The Family Council decided to make the change after Beebe and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel both said they opposed the measure, Cox said. "A little over a week ago, both the governor and the attorney general came out in opposition to this ballot proposal, and they said this ought to be about child welfare. We felt that if they thought that it needed to be stated that it's about child welfare, then we were perfectly fine to do that, because that's what it's about," he said. The Family Council also reworded the ballot title to make it clear that same-sex marriages are not valid in Arkansas, Cox said. If McDaniel approves the revised wording and ballot title of the proposal, the Family Council will circulate it on petitions rather than the version McDaniel approved earlier this month, Cox said. Nearly 62,000 signatures of registered voters are needed to place an initiated act on the 2008 general election ballot. Beebe said he remained opposed to the proposal, regardless of minor changes to its wording. He said he preferred the current system, in which decisions about the long-term care of adopted children are made on a case-by-case basis, "with the best interest of the child as the guiding influence." "We have a thorough system in place where child-care professionals and judges work diligently to place these children in caring and nurturing homes," Beebe said in a state released through his office. "This proposal aims to override that process and dictate the perceived best interests of these children to the courts and to the state of Arkansas. "We should not undermine the current deliberative system and replace it with a rigid, blanket policy that does not allow full consideration for the circumstances of each child." Beebe has said he does not object to the state's current policy of not placing foster children with unmarried, cohabiting couples. "Foster children, by their very nature, are folks in temporary situations, and inevitably many of them are very fragile for a lot of obvious reasons," Beebe said Wednesday during a public forum at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. "Many times they've been moved from situation to situation and will continue to be moved from situation to situation. In today's society, I think it's in the best interest of the foster system to have traditional married couples be the foster parents," the governor said. The Family Council has been seeking to change state law in a way that would, in effect, reinstate a ban on foster parenting by gays that was struck down by the state Supreme Court last year. The court ruled that a Child Welfare Review Board regulation prohibiting gays from serving as foster parents was unconstitutional because it was not authorized by the Legislature. The Family Council supported legislation during this year's regular session that would have banned gays and unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents, but the measure died in a House committee after passing in the Senate. It is not unheard of for supporters of a ballot initiative to revise and resubmit their proposal after receiving approval from the attorney general, but it does not happen often, McDaniel spokesman Gabe Holmstrom said. In such cases, the certification procedure is the same. "It goes through the exact same process. Even if they just change one word, we still have our statutory obligation to make sure it's not confusing or misleading," Holmstrom said. |
