Jerry Cox made the following remarks at the news conference marking the official launch of the campaign to pass the Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act:
Remarks by Jerry Cox
Family Council Action Committee President
Regarding the Arkansas Adoption Act of 2008
January 24, 2008
We are here today to launch a campaign to pass the Arkansas Adoption Act. The Family Council Action Committee is proposing this initiated act. It will prevent adoptive or foster care children from being placed in homes with couples who live together out of wedlock. This act applies equally to homosexuals and heterosexuals.
This initiated act has three purposes.
First, let me say that this act is not about the rights of adults. It is about the welfare of children. This act will ensure that our state’s most vulnerable children are placed in the best homes possible. The State of Arkansas is creating families every day through adoption and foster care. This act simply says that if the State of Arkansas is going to create families, it needs to create ones that give children the best chance for healthy development.
Second, this act is a response to a homosexual political agenda at work in other states. This agenda uses children to advance the goals of special interest groups. Homosexuals in California, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont, have successfully used adoptive or foster care children to advance their agenda. Activists in these states have already secured passage of laws that support adoption or foster care by homosexuals. Arkansas has no law on the books to prevent this. The children of Arkansas should never be used to promote the social or political agenda of any special interest group.
Third, the campaign to pass this act is designed to increase the number of families willing to adopt or serve as foster parents. By circulating petitions in churches and elsewhere, we will spend the next several months highlighting the need for more foster and adoptive homes. We’ve published a book entitled, Adoption and Foster Care in Arkansas. Volunteers in this campaign will not only be circulating petitions, but they will be encouraging families to consider adopting a child or becoming a foster parent. Overall, we expect this effort to increase the number of foster care and adoptive homes in Arkansas.
This act protects the welfare of children, it blunts a homosexual agenda, and it encourages more people to adopt children or serve as foster parents. That’s what this act does. Anyone who tries to tell you anything less isn’t telling the whole story.
It is important to point out three things about this initiated act:
First, having state standards for adoption and foster care is nothing new. It is the policy of the Arkansas Department of Human Services to prohibit cohabiting couples from serving as foster parents. This act will simply ensure that we keep it that way. To adopt a child, parents must meet a number of requirements relating to income, home size, age, temperament, and many more. These laws and policies are in place to protect the health, safety, and welfare of children. The Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act simply makes our current state policy the same for both adoption and foster care.
Second, we’re talking primarily about children who are in the custody of the State. We’re not here to judge single parents, unwed couples with children, or anyone’s sexual orientation. What we are saying is that if the State of Arkansas is going to create families through adoption and foster care, it ought to create good ones. Virtually every study on parenting over the past 40 years has concluded the very same thing. Children fare best in a stable home with a married mother and father. The Arkansas Adoption Act will keep our adoption and foster standards high.
Third, unless the law is changed it will continue to be legal for couples living together out of wedlock, including homosexual couples to adopt children, and with a simple rule-change they could serve as foster parents. By placing this initiated act on the ballot, every voter in Arkansas will have a chance to stand up for children who need a good home.
In order to place the Arkansas Adoption Act on the ballot this November we need to secure over 61,975 valid signatures of Arkansas voters by July 7th of this year. In order to reach this goal, we plan to gather over 100,000 petition signatures by the end of June. As I said, the campaign begins here today and by the end of June, we plan to return to this same Capitol Rotunda with all the signatures necessary to place this issue on the ballot.
