Parenting Measure Qualifies for Arkansas Ballot

An initiative that would prohibit individuals cohabiting outside of marriage from adopting or serving as foster parents has qualified for the Arkansas ballot this November. More from Jurist here.

A bit of background: In 1999, the Arkansas Child Welfare Agency Review Board promulgated a regulation prohibiting an individual from serving as a foster parent “if any adult member of that person’s household is a homosexual.” The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down this regulation in 2006. In 2007, the Arkansas legislature tried (and failed) to pass legislation that would have imposed a ban on lesbian and gay foster parenting and adoption. This initiative is yet another attempt to re-implement this ban, albeit in a facially neutral manner—because it nominally applies to unmarried same-sex and different-sex couples equally (though, in reality, only different-sex couples can marry Arkansas and escape the ban).

-Tony Infanti

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0 Responses to Parenting Measure Qualifies for Arkansas Ballot

  1. Ann Bartow says:

    Anything you can suggest that readers of this blog can do to try to defeat this?

  2. Tony Infanti says:

    Our readers could visit the web site for Arkansas Families First (http://arkansasfamiliesfirst.org/), which is a coalition of organizations aligned against this measure, and support AFF (and/or its constituent organizations) in the fight against the ballot measure.