Arkansas Voter Drive Kicked Off To Bar Gays From Adopting

With children being shuffled from foster home to foster home like some piece of used furniture (not to mention the children living in poverty and starving around the world) one would think the true Christians would direct their efforts to addressing such needs. But not the Christianists in this country. They far prefer to spend time and resources demonizing gays and seeking to marginalize their rights as equal citizens. This Arkansas group of gay haters is merely the latest example. No doubt these people are Mike Huckabee's religious brethren. I wonder whether Mr. Jerry Cox has a real job or if he is another sad individual who has to come up with anti-gay causes so that he can shake down the sheeple to support himself? I also have to wonder whether he's another repressed closet case who is taking out his own self-loathing on other gays. Here are highlights from 365gay.com ( http://www.365gay.com/Newscon08/01/012508arad.htm):

(Little Rock, Arkansas) A conservative social policy group launched its campaign Thursday to collect enough signatures to force a ballot measure in November to bar same-sex or unmarried opposite-sex couples from adopting or becoming foster parents in Arkansas. "What we are doing is, we are protecting the welfare of children,” Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council Action Committee, said at a news conference at the state Capitol. The same organization was largely responsible for the passage of an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution banning gay marriage.

The present measure would prevent a child from being adopted or placed in a foster home "if the individual seeking to adopt or to serve as a foster parent is cohabiting with a sexual partner outside of a marriage which is valid under the constitution and laws of this state." The Council must collect nearly 92,000 signatures by July to put the measure on the ballot. Cox said he expects to submit more than 100,000 names.

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.

Several state and national child welfare groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the court to strike down the exclusion because it worked against the best interests of foster children. In its unanimous ruling, the court said testimony in the state's appeal demonstrated that "the driving force behind adoption of the regulations was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children but rather based upon the board's views of morality and its bias against homosexuals."