LITTLE ROCK — Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment that would exclude unwedded couples from adoptions or foster care submitted a revised version Wednesday that would declare married couples the best guardians for Arkansas children.
Arkansas Family Council submitted the revised ballot proposal, along with a new popular name, although Attorney General Dustin McDaniel had certified the group's original proposal last week, clearing the way for supporters to collect voter signatures.
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http://www2.arkansa…">Read the revised initiated act proposal
"We believe that the proposal we sent over today is a much better proposal than the one the attorney general approved initially," Arkansas Family Council director Jerry Cox said. "I don't think there is going to be a problem."
The revised version includes the sentence: "The people of Arkansas find and declare that it is in the best interest of children in need of adoption or foster care to be reared in homes in which adoptive or foster parents are not co-habiting outside of marriage."
Family Council organizers had second thoughts about the popular name, which McDaniel had recommended and the group adopted, and the group revised the name in the interest of clarity, Cox said.
Cox noted that Arkansas law does not allow same-sex marriages, and said the original name included an unnecessary reference to individuals living outside a valid marriage "with an opposite-sex or same-sex partner." The phrase was deleted in the revised proposal.
McDaniel was out of the country Wednesday, but spokesman Gabe Holmstrom said McDaniel will reserve comment on the revised measure until after it goes through the certification process in his office. Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample declined comment because the office had not seen the revised measure as of Wednesday morning.
Family Council will have to collect more than 61,000 signatures of valid voters by July 7, 2008, to get the measure on the general election ballot.
Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
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