More bad news for the gays: “Arkansas voters have approved a measure banning unmarried couples who are living together being adoptive or foster parents. The vote imposes a ban that the Legislature balked at authorizing. More than 56 percent of voters supported the ban, said by its proponents to be aimed primarily at keeping gays from becoming foster or adoptive parents. The measure’s sponsor, the Arkansas Family Council, tried to paint its as a battle against a ‘gay agenda.'” [POQ]
Prohibition.
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NO TO POO PUSHERS
THANK GOD!
Every child deserves a mother and a father, not a couple of sexual perverts/paedophiles. I hope the rest of America bans gay adoption. It’s in the children’s best interests
Steven Houston
My partner and I witnessed our daughter’s birth. Today, 3 years later, she is a happy, healthy, well-adjusted, gregarious, funny, smart little girl. She is fully bi-lingual; she has traveled to 9 states and 4 countries. She lives in a beautiful house, has a new puppy, lots of friends, tons of aunts and uncles, and is the LIGHT OF OUR LIVES.
The person that posted the hate-filled comment has no clue how many Arkansas children will remain in hurtful, dangerous living situations because of the decision to deny them a loving home. Over the past five years, nearly 1,000 Arkansas children in foster care reached the age of 18 and left the system without ever being adopted into a permanent home (from a study by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families). The number of children “aging out” of the system in fiscal year 2006 was 216, up from 180 five years earlier. Over 9,000 children are in foster care – but every year more names are added to the list of children who have slipped through the cracks.
Children who “age out†of the foster care system face homelessness, they lack a high school education and they are more likely to engage in criminal activities. Is this what Arkansas wants for the children that they are charged with protecting?
Children deserve love. Period. End of discussion. Children DESERVE love.
Vinman
When will you Right Wing nut cases get off of “our” blog? All you can do is keep pushing your “Yes on Hate” agenda. Not very “christian” of you!
Othniel
I have not even dared to grieve this one yet.
As a gay adoptive father whose mother and family live in Arkansas, this one truly is personal. I now know the state does not consider my children her heirs should I predecease them. Were we ever again to cross the state line in downtown Texarkana, my sons and I would lose the legal connection we have in Texas and the rest of the Western world. My brother would never challenge the relationship, but as I tell my own legal clients, what if he also predeceased our mother and his executor were making the decision rather than him, and what if that executor were the government acting for a failed bank to which he might have owed a loan, with a fiduciary duty to Amercan taxpayers to maximize the value of my brother’s estate?
I cannot bear yet to tell my sons one of their aunts in Little Rock and their age mate cousin who like them voted for the first time, chose by their votes to disown any family relation to my sons, and thought by doing so they were doing the will of God. These culture wars, as Justice Scalia calls them whenever he wants to put gay people back in prison or replace the Constitution’s Progress Clause with a Regress one, crowing how it cannot be un American to execute gay people because Vermont once had such a law, actually hurt real people.
How many of my Straight allies have ever had to explain to a son or daughter that their aunt voted to disown them? This is just not real.
Eep. Talk about marginalization. We are not going to Arkansas for Thanksgiving this year.
And to the pseudo-Christians monitoring this site, please stop trying to hurt our children.
L
Powerful testimony, Othniel. Thank you. We wish you and your sons all the best.
Clark
Othniel, as a fellow Arkansan living in New York, I totally agree with you. I have to go home for Thanksgiving, but if I had children with my partner (which we plan to do), I wouldn’t be traveling there this year. There’s a reason young gay people leave places like Arkansas for more progressive areas.
Othniel
Thanks L and CLark
As usual Arkansas is behind the times. California by passing Props 2 and 8 in the same election has sent the loud and clear signal that the rights of egg laying chickens not to be too closely confined in their cages are more worthy of protection than those of GLBT humans to enjoy the otherwise universal legal protection of marriage. Apparently our new America is more concerned with chickens than gay people, but we ought to be used to that by now, and to have expected it, since most of us have given so much money to Democratic candidates that all we have left is chicken feed anyway.
Arkansas, although carefully remembering to throw its gay citizens and their chldren not just under a bus but into an active volcano, remains far behind California in securing the rights of its chickens to being treated humanely.
Hopefully our new president will ask Senators Pryor and Lincoln to get on this very quickly, and Arkansas can be brougt up to the new Democratic standartd of human rights for chickens.
Seriously, I am trying to put this all in perspective. By the weekend perhaps I may feel at least as worthy of protection and humane treatment as a polar bear.
paul
No child should have to grow up in Arkansas, or anywhere in the south. There are third world countries with higher mentalities than
this part of the world.
bobito
yeah, it’s “bad news for the gays” but it’s worse news for the kids who could have been helped.
Phoenix (The Rainbow Warrior Girding His Loins For the Revolution, not the Pale One)
@ #6 CLARK,
Why are you going back this year? Why are you giving money to a state that hates you? Why are you giving presents to relatives who hate you?
Gay dollars to gay-friendly states! They voted with their prejudice, it’s time we voted with our wallets!
DJ
Who the hell would WANT to raise children in Arkansas!?! (Unless they were REALLY your cousins!)
MG
@DJ: What?
MG
DJ, I’m straight and raising children in Arkansas. I have a gay brother in Washington. In trying to educate myself in gay issues, I came upon this site. I find your comment offensive and only hurting your cause. Why would you want to put fences up with a neighbor that you are trying to convince to clean up their yard? Would make more sense for gays to move to Arkansas and “teach” them to be more progressive.