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."