Fags In The News - ACLU Sues to Block Ark. Fag Adoption Law

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/arkansas_adoption/2008/12/30/166363.html

ACLU Sues to Block Ark. Same-Sex Adoption Law

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. ? More than a dozen families filed a lawsuit Tuesday
challenging a new Arkansas law banning unmarried couples living
together from becoming foster or adoptive parents.

The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the
lawsuit on behalf of the families in Pulaski County Circuit Court
seeking to overturn Act 1, which was approved by voters in last
month's general election.

"Act 1 violates the state's legal duty to place the best interest of
children above all else," said Marie-Bernarde Miller, a Little Rock
attorney in the lawsuit.

The group filed the lawsuit on behalf of 29 adults and children from
more than a dozen families, including a grandmother who lives with her
same-sex partner of nine years and is the only relative able and
willing to adopt her grandchild, who is now in Arkansas state care.

The plaintiffs also include Stephanie Huffman and Wendy Rickman, a
lesbian couple raising two sons together who want to adopt a foster
child from the state.

"It's just wrong. It's an injustice," said Huffman, who lives in
Conway. "I'm being denied an opportunity to provide a home for a
special-needs child."

The families claim that the act's language was misleading to voters
and that it violates their constitutional rights. The lawsuit was
filed against the state of Arkansas, the attorney general, the
Arkansas Department of Human Services and its director, and the Child
Welfare Agency Review Board and its chairman.

The Arkansas Family Council, a conservative group that campaigned for
the ban, said it was aimed at gay couples but the law will affect
heterosexuals and homosexuals equally.

Jerry Cox, the council's president, said he had expected a lawsuit to
be filed if the measure passed.

"We are confident this lawsuit will fail and Act 1 will remain on the
books," Cox said.

Rita Sklar, ACLU Arkansas' executive director, said the group wanted
to file the lawsuit before the law takes effect Thursday. Department
of Human Services officials have said they do not expect to have to
remove any foster children from their homes. The state had already
barred cohabiting unmarried couples from becoming foster parents and
was in the process of reversing that policy when voters approved the
new ban.

The law does not affect any adoptions that were finalized before it
takes effect.

The ACLU had represented four plaintiffs in a lawsuit that led the
state Supreme Court to overturn the state's ban on gay foster parents
in 2006. The Family Council had campaigned for the initiated act in
response to that ruling.

The lawsuit challenging Act 1 was assigned to Pulaski County Circuit
Judge Timothy Fox, who had initially overturned the gay foster parent
ban.

The ACLU's suit notes that the council had pushed for the new law as
part of a campaign to blunt a so-called "gay agenda," but the
restriction affects heterosexual and homosexual couples equally.
.

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