Arkansas' social conservatives suffered a bit of blow this week.
The Family Council Action Committee confirmed that it fell about 4,000 signatures short of the 61,794 needed to put a gay adoption ban on this November's ballot.
Though they missed their deadline, they've been given a 30 day extension to meet their mark:
Over the next month, the group's strategy is to redeem the signatures disqualified because of the notaries and gather an additional 10,000 signatures, [Family Council Executive Director Jerry] Cox said. The group will turn again to large churches to gather many of the remaining signatures, he said.One reason the group has had difficulty gathering the signatures is because the measure is more complicated to explain than the anti-gay marriage amendment it successfully petitioned to put on the ballot four years ago, Cox said.
The Family Council group submitted about 200,000 signatures for that proposal and voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Cox has said the group's adoption initiative this year aims to "blunt a homosexual agenda."
What he meant to say, of course, is "deprive abandoned children of happy, healthy homes."
Editor
Andrew Belonsky Editorial Director
David Hauslaib Publisher
Jossip Initiatives
hey, AK is Alaska; AR is Arkansas…but either state is red and gay-unfriendly in my opinion!
Arkansas is legislatively pretty gay unfriendly. I went to college there during the end of the Hukaberry years. If you live in Little Rock or NWA (north west arkansas) it can actually be pretty tolerable and enjoyable. if you live in some of the smaller areas particularly along the river delta, it is as bad as you would think.
But honestly I enjoyed my time there, the state gets a bad reputation for a variety of reasons, and its not necessarily deserved.
Then again my alma mater is referred to by this charming little phrase "Hendrix, where the women are women, and the men are too"
Ryan — that reputation is specifically why I chose Hendrix in the first place. Unfortunately, I got a lot more education than action out of the deal.
hahaha yeah it is kind of slim pickings in conway (impressed another hendrix mo actually reads queerty) though to be fair, I did meet my current bf of 4 years at Hendrix in our junior year, but we were insanely lucky, it has a disproportinately high number of mo's to be sure, but it is still 1200 students in the middle of …conway so you just have to do the best you can.
I went to Arkansas Tech and there was LOTS of mo's there! Of course, Hendrix was only a short interstate hop away, too.
I went to Lyon in Batesville and, while small, we had our share of gays. I got enough action to see me through all four years, too.
Arkansas is AR…Alaska is AK.
sorry to nitpick.
WHY does this group get an EXTRA month to gather signatures, has any other group gotten extnsions?
because they dont like gay people mark, did you really have to ask?
The extra month is standard under Arkansas ballot initiative law — all groups proposing ballot initiatives get it.