It looks like the Arkansas state legislature is going to try to take some steps to make sure that nobody accidentally confuses them with a progressive state. You see, last June the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on homosexual couples being foster partents was unconstitutional. Sadly, The Family Council and some of the Arkansas legislators are out to get the old ban written into law.
According to this slightly confusing article by Doug Thompson, The Family Council feels that they won't have any trouble finding a sponsor to get a bill passed banning couples from being foster parents based on sexual orientation.
You may have read a post here a week and a half ago by CityMama talking about the new restrictions that Texas is using to stop people from becoming foster parents. I guess Arkansas could join Texas in a system that wouldn't allow same sex couples to participate in an overburdened foster system.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I don't see how placing a child with two people (unmarried, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered) who are genuinely going out of their way to take in a juvenile that needs a good home could not be in that child's best interest. These children need a place to live. The state needs people to help. Do these states assume that all homosexuals are also pedophiles? It doesn't make sense. What sort of 40 year old stereotype porpoganda are these people working off of?
I have friends with gay parents. I have gay friends that are parents. I have not noticed that the children turn out any different from those of us with parents of opposite genders, with the possible exception that most of these people end up slightly more open minded.
That doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me.
