Arkansas Supreme Court Supports Gay Foster Parents

[Emproph]

A spot of good news (with my classic sardonic spin of course ).
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The Arkansas State Supreme Court ruled Thursday that homosexuals cannot be barred from becoming foster parents.

I got this as a Citizen Link article but decided to make it a new thread because it seems to be a national story. I know my dad’s office get’s USA Today, so I’m thinking a lot of Republicans / Christian right, et al, are reading this as well.

It’s kind of interesting to see the different ways they told the story. I think it also touches on the child predators thread.

Some Highlights:

USA Today July 1, 2006
Ark. governor seeks gay foster parent ban

The state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court decision that threw out a ban on homosexuals serving as foster parents. Four people sued after the policy was put in effect in 1999. The state Child Welfare Board dropped the policy after losing a court fight in 2004.

Thursday's court ruling left open the possibility that legislators could enact a ban by law or possibly give a state board authority to do so.

But Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Arkansas, said the court ruling itself could make legislation difficult to pass. She cited language in the ruling that said there was no connection between homosexuality and a child's welfare.

A Florida ban on adoptions by gays and lesbians was upheld in a federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the ACLU. Utah and Mississippi also restrict gay adoptions.

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New York Times June 30, 2006
Court Overturns Arkansas Ban on Same-Sex Foster Parents

On a vote of 7 to 0, the justices agreed with a lower court judge that the state's Child Welfare Agency Review Board, which adopted the ban in 1999, had improperly tried to regulate public morality and had violated the separation of powers between the executive branch and the
General Assembly, Arkansas's legislature.

There is no correlation between the health, welfare and safety of foster children and the blanket exclusion of any individual who is a homosexual or who resides in a household with a homosexual," Associate Justice Donald L. Corbin wrote in the opinion.

In addition, the court said, the testimony of a member of the child welfare board demonstrated that "the driving force behind adoption of the regulations was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children but rather based upon the board's views of morality and its bias against homosexuals."

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Citizen Link June 30, 2006
(Focus on the Family)
Court Says Foster Kids Do Fine in Same-Sex Homes

The Arkansas State Supreme Court ruled Thursday that homosexuals cannot be barred from becoming foster parents because such placement has not been shown to harm children, The Associated Press reported.

In 1999 the Child Welfare Agency Review Board determined that foster kids would be more likely to thrive if placed in a traditional home with a husband and wife.

All seven justices declared that the board's decision to exclude gays from the foster-parenting program inappropriately imposed a moral view

Carrie Gordon Earll, director of issues analysis for Focus on the Family Action, said "It's not bias against homosexuals to recognize that children do better when they have both a mom and a dad in the home.

"There is overwhelming data that children do best with both a mom and dad. Children need the balance and role modeling of both a man and a woman.
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Focus on the Family/Citizen Link PROPAGANDA: 3 sentences, 3 references to children, 3 references to male and female parents. Three nuclear families in three sentences. Talk about a sound bite!
(Note: This is the second time I have documented this tactic.)

It’s like saying that starving children do best with a balanced meal, not two nutritional protein bars or two nutritional carbohydrate bars at the same time. (Not the best analogy I know, but you get my point.)

This is not only their argument against gay adoption/foster care, but also against gay marriage.

They have crept along the “slippery slope” argument, behind our backs to arrive at the reality that: the legal right to see your spouse in the hospital or share property, etc., automatically results in depriving children of BOTH a mother and a father.

Ingeniously skipping an entire step in the gay marriage debate that is currently going unchallenged.

The Bulk of their argument against gay marriage is about raising children. To that extent the anti-gay marriage argument IS the anti-gay adoption argument!

[Zerbie]

Emproph! Thank you SO much for the clarity with which you outline their argument in your last few paragraphs!

I have been bothered no end by the automatic assertion that gays cannot have legal recognition of their relationships because of children, and nnot able to simplify it down enough to articulate so simply. Yay. Thank you.

[Liberal Crozier]

When Governor Clinton became president, his lieutenant governor, Jim Guy Tucker, became governor. At that period, the DLC/DINO party controlled the state....a strong legislature, weak executive form of government so popular with Reconstruction and re-amended Constitutions.

By mid-Clinton presidency, the GOP had begun to control the state. Tucker's successor as lieutenant governor was the Southern Baptist minister-pastor of the First Church in Texarkana, AR. The neocons then found some issues to make Tucker resign, and the Republican Mike Huckabee became governor, and has been elected several times since then.

The ink had not yet dried on the AR Supreme Court decision (they elect the justices every four years) that Huckabee, not seeking re-election but with senatorial ambitions, suggested that he would seek to legislatively reverse the decision and disallow gays from the process.

More, the gubernatorial candidates are both " born-again Southern Baptists" who either actively or passively support Huckabee's decision.

It seems that with the USA, whether it is NY or AR, the "good news" is tempered by seriously bad news, and court decisions are always mired in long "waiting periods" to initiate justice - allowing the enemies to regroup and to further frustrate or deny any meaningful change.

PS - This is an important point - In Parliamentary democracies, the changes - either judicial or legislative - ARE IMMEDIATE. Justice is NOT frustrated by either six months or one year delay in implementation. The US laws allow justice to take a vacation for that period while the opposing forces regroup, retrench, and remove the elements that gave them a loss in the courts or legislature.

SO - IF NEW JERSEY, OR PENNSYLVANIA OR NEW YORK'S COURTS GIVE US JUSTICE - WATCH FOR THE SIX MONTH TO YEAR TIME FRAME BEFORE JUSTICE HAPPENS AND THEY SNATCH VICTORY OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEFEAT.

[Zerbie]

Thank you for the perspective. You are right, if we have progress, next there is backlash. But considering how things were only a few short decades ago, I for one am still going to celebrate the small victories along the way until things are running smoothly for us everywhere. Fighting hard all along the way when necessary, of course.

[Liberal Crozier]

My dear guy is sleeping nearly 24-7, as the nausea and bp issues are not easily solved. The AR commentary was mine, as well.

I understand your willingness to see the glass half-full - but note that the MA beachhead is being challenged seriously, and I fear that the many attempts to stop the avalanche toward a 2008 referendum has been successfully thwarted by the theocon forces. Plus, Romney has been successful in keeping the 1913 law created for anti-mixed race marriage as a valid law.

It is NOT that the US GLBT community has no enemies in the theocon camp, it is that the LIBERALS do not have control of the Political Left, and the Political Centre Right and Centre Pragmatic agree with the Theocons and either betray us or fail to support.

For example, Mike Beebe, the AR "Democratic" gubernatorial candidate AGREES with Republican Huckabee and his GOP gubernatorial opponent and is asking the Democrat-controlled legislature (read DINO conservatives) to pass laws prohibiting gays as foster parents.

The US courts are not necessarily "liberal", but they are aware that the state constitutions and laws do not support a two-tier civil rights system. Many of these decisions are made by libertarian classic conservatives and judicial liberals in agreement with those legal realities. The theocon legislator knows that the way to excite their base is to attempt, even without the necessary votes, to write laws that negate the legal decisions.

In US states where the court system is elected on a biennial basis, and are not given life tenures as in federal courts, the political considerations allow for either active or passive support for a legislative fix. In MA, justice for gays took six months to implement the law - allowing the theocons to first stop the gay marriages - and now, to put them in jeopardy by referendum in 2008. NY, PA and NJ are also states where the theocons are organised and unwilling to compromise until all laws, RDP or CU or Marriage are lost, and have "Democrats" unwilling to lose to social conservatives on this issue, and betray our cause.

Yes, today, only Canada, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain give complete and equal rights, while many European nations approximate the laws without full participation. Those are the facts. Only Canada allows foreign nationals to marry within their borders despite their own national laws prohibiting it. The others require that one of the partners holds particular citizenship or permanent residency in that nation.

Not since the late 19th and early 20th century, and more intensely global in nature, the US political, economic and religious components are completely controlled by the theocons and secular global neocons. And like that period, the Democratic party was also socially conservative, and politically ambivalent and pragmatic.

[Zerbie]

I agree with your assessment of the situation, and I feel I probably understand it a little less than you do. Or else, just differently. And Hi! I didn't notice that this was Spouse, not Crozier.

Glad he is sleeping, sleep is so necessary and restorative.

Now, the way I see it, the LGBT community doesn't have a firm ally in any political camp. And even if we DID with the dems, it would be irrelevent because the D party right now is being impotent and spineless (for the most part.)

Yes, I've been aware of attempts to un-do the MA ruling. I am following the marriage amendments closely as they crop up round the states, as my state is fighting one now, which will be on the ballot in Nov. Nevertheless, the mere fact that we aren't being blindsided by these things anymore leaves me optimistic. I agree that the courts are ruling against - as you say - a two tier civil rights system, not out of personal smypathy with the causes. Which is as it should be, and is why the theocons (great term for them) are crying "Activist judges! Activist judges!"

Z