Arkansas Blog

Max we will be over in another county politiking on this tonight.

Can you PLEASE give that list of retired Judges who oppose Initiated Act 1

ARK. BLOG: Another reader has helpfully posted it.

For Release - October 6, 2008

Statement in Opposition to Proposed Initiated Act 1

"By narrowing the qualifications required of people who seek to adopt children or to act as foster parents, proposed Initiated Act No. 1 would limit the ability of every Arkansas judge to choose custodial parents who would serve the best interests of vulnerable children. The choices available to neglected and abused children and to the judges who must find homes for them are already tragically limited by the children's circumstances. Instead of imposing a blanket rule that would apply to every case, the needs of these children, and the best means of satisfying their needs, should be left to elected judges to decide case-by-case. Any step, such as that proposed in Initiated Act. No. 1, to limit further the options for stable homes for these children would do them grave injustice. It is in the best interests of these children that Initiated Act. No. 1 be defeated."

· W.H. "Dub" Arnold, retired Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

· Tom Glaze, retired Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

· Steele Hays, retired Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

· Jack Holt, Jr., retired Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

· Bradley D. Jesson, former Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

· Robin L. Mays, retired Chancery Judge

· Olly Neal, retired Judge, Arkansas Court of Appeals

· David Newbern, retired Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

· John Plegge, retired Circuit Judge

· Andree Roaf, retired Judge, Arkansas Court of Appeals

· Judith W. Rogers, retired Judge, Arkansas Court of Appeals

· Edward Thomas Smitherman, retired Circuit Judge

· John F. Stroud, retired Judge, Arkansas Court of Appeals

Good news from CA on their fight ion a similar battlefront

Jane Hamsher to FDL
show details 4:11 PM (11 minutes ago)

Reply

http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/10/teachers_union_donates_1_milli.html

October 15, 2008

Teachers' union donates $1 million to preserve same-sex marriage

SACRAMENTO - The California Teachers Association has sent a new $1 million check to the campaign working to protect the rights of same-sex couples to marry.

Meanwhile, faith leaders in the San Diego area will be calling voters from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday urging them to vote against Proposition 8.

"Regardless of how people feel about marriage, it is simply wrong to eliminate fundamental rights, said Jan Garbosky, president of the board of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego.

The large contribution from the CTA comes just days after opponents of same-sex marriage sharply criticized a San Francisco elementary school field trip to see a teacher wed her partner. It was a charter school and parents were offered an opportunity to keep their children in class.

Glad to see Ms. Sklar is included on the video. That's like waving a red flag in front of those who may be undecided but leaning towards voting FOR Initiated Act One. Done deal.

This is a well-done video. I hope it receives wide circulation, especially in churches.

Watching it made me revisit (with no little pain) my years of providing in-home care 24-7 for my mother as she declined from dementia. That is, I did this along with my life partner.

I will never forget the burdens imposed on us by the judge who handled the guardianship--her insistence, after she appointed an ad litem attorney on the specious basis that we had not provided sufficient accounting, that the ad litem attorney visit our home, as if a gay couple could not possibly provide loving and good care for a parent.

That ad litem attorney is now running in one of the races for a judgeship. Her website proclaimed, in the first election cycle, that she does all kinds of pro bono work for families. She took a hefty sum from my mother's estate--money needed for her care in a nursing home as she got worse--for the bogus ad litem work.

I will never forget being addressed repeatedly by the judge, an African-American female who should know what prejudice feels like, consistently in third person in court hearings and court documents, as was my partner. I will never forget how she utterly ignored letters from my brother, the only other surviving child of my mother, from my mother's brother and sisters (all of them), and from my father's one remaining sibling and her husband, all telling her they were deeply grateful for the good care my partner and I gave my mother.

I'll never forget being told by attorneys in Arkansas and elsewhere that they had never encountered a situation in which a judge was so hostile to a child caring for his aging parent, when no one had raised a single question about the care we were providing or about how we preserved my mother's funds.

This nightmare experience taught me how easy it is for courts to intrude in family situations where good care is offered--as in the case Rita Sklar recounts, where a child count not be placed with her aunt because the aunt was cohabiting with someone. And all to satisfy ugly prejudice. The experience also taught me how difficult it is to combat that prejudice without legal protection. It will be doubly difficult in the case of children needing foster care, if prejudice is enshrined in our law.

I note, by the way, that my judge-tormentor is NOT among those calling for people to vote against Initiated Act 1. No surprise there.

Correction: "where a child count not" should read "where a child could not."

KnockKnock, I hope the day never comes when the courts intrude into the inner workings of your family, due to some sort of prejudice you don't yet foresee.

If they do, will you please remember that you are promoting a legal change that enshrines prejudice for some other citizens, through this act?

And that it's a dangerous precedent to go down that road, since the prejudice we try to enshrine against others may one day be enshrined against our own selves?

Karma, you know. Or, in Christian theological terms, justice from a God who is deeply concerned to see injustice overturned, and who doesn't sleep until that happens.

THANK YOU jonesvegasnative.

Folks you would be astounded to directly, like up front and personal, see how much ignorance there is about this Act.
Well, we do have Knock and chasv on here so I suppose you are not.

However, we have found when you tell voters that grandma with her roomie cannot adopt her
own grandchild eyes roll and "WHAT!" becomes the question.

Additionally when you show them that gays will not be prevented from adopting nor fostering
then eyes continue to be stuck in the headlights of reality.

When you show them the long list of Ark children waiting for homes they swallow quietly.

Just the facts, the truth is all it takes to fight this. Plus a donation to Ark Families First.

Do it, y'all.
.

Give foster kids...especiallly teenagers...the right to refuse a placement and I would be inclined to vote against Initiated Act One. They have no choice and no voice and (remember, we're in backwards thinking Arkansas) probably no interest in being placed in a gay home. They don't like the government imposing its will on them anymore than anybody else.

By the way MT, the video is much like the Bible. No use of the words "homosexual" or "gay."

KnockKnock, teenaged kids in particular would indeed have a choice. If the new policy enacted by DHS--and supported by the gov--is not altered by Act 1, homes would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. If it was not the best fit for a kid, that child would not be placed in the home. Simple as that.

I for the life of me cannot figure out why anyone would vote on a measure that would remove case-by-case decision making from foster or adoptive care. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Wrong. If a child is in the custody of the state and a foster home has been approved by the state then the child can be placed by the state in that home whether he/she likes it or not. The only way a placement could get out of it would be to a. run away or b. make life miserable for all involved. Neither is a good option. I wish Initiated Act One made an exception and allowed for the placement of a child into the custody of a blood relative regardless of his/her home situation. But putting potentially unwilling teenagers into homosexual or cohabitating homes troubles me more.

I had to become the guardian of my Brother's childern when he was sick because I could not get any medical help for the kids as an Aunt. Once I became the guardian my brother couldn't get medical attention as their Father because I was their guardian. Catch 22?

Max...many thanks for posting this video.

I am speaking pesonally, and not in the capacity as a CASA Board member.

I am delighted to see and hear that there is a group who will strongly oppose this BS Act.

There are a tremendous number of children who currently are being tossed from one situation to another without the abiity to become stabilized. This BS over not married or gay/lesbian couples is exactly that - complete BS.

I find it appalling and disturbing that these self righteous do-gooders are so quick to throw a stone at those who do not meet their narrow-minded approval for the position of nuturing and loving small people - they apparently do not seem to realize that the stone that they throw hits the children they seek to 'protect' instead.

Knock Knock - you should beat your head against the wall maybe it would knock some sense in to that hard head. Maybe not because it is obvious that the your head is made of stone. Watch the video again, it doesn't dodge the gay parenting issue. You just don't like that a minister says the homophobic mindset is BS. God loves all. Knock Knock.....who's there? Obviously no one is home.

ELwood, I'm uneasy with the statement, "Additionally when you show them that gays will not be prevented from adopting nor fostering, then eyes continue to be stuck in the headlights of reality."

What you say is true, in that the initiated act equally prohibits opposite-sex and same-sex cohabiting couples from adopting. Which I suppose can then be read to mean that a non-cohabiting gay person or non-cohabiting straight person could be legally considered for adoption.

But it's clear to me--and I think to most voters--that this act originates in a single motive from the Cox group: that is to use the issue of possible gay adoption as a scare issue to drive right-wing voters to the polls. I don't think people will be headed to the polls to vote for this initiative (and, in the hopes of Cox et al., for Palin-McCain) because they are primarily concerned about preventing cohabiting opposite-sex couples from adopting.

It's the gays they're riled about.

So what makes me uneasy is erasing that motive, and gay folks, as we try to combat the initiative. I understand the politics that lead us to focus on how the bill would attack the rights of heterosexual Arkansans equally with the rights of gay Arkansans. ANY attack on the rights of any group should be of concern, because if the attack succeeds, it sets a precedent for violating the rights of other groups.

Nonetheless, I think that it's a bit misleading to deny the predominant homophobic intent of this legislation, and its cynical use of gay citizens to try to bring in the vote for Palin-McCain. It doesn't help to invisibilize gay folks further in trying to get the bill defeated.

We have to confront homophobia squarely in Arkansas, to prevent any future cynical political use of gay citizens by initiatives of this sort, seems to me. That abuse of a group of citizens already subject to other forms of abuse ought to concern everyone: what we permit to be done (or what we ourselves do) to a despised minority may and will one day be done to us.

I'm interested in finding out how I can become a foster parent to Rita Sklar and most of the rest of the women in this video clip! Looks to me you can forget timber and say that Arkansas's most valuable export is beautiful women!

OK, seriously, whoever produced this video gets a dozen roses. It's slick as a whistle. Whoever lighted it gets roses too....very pretty! OK, even more serious...it's all about the children and should be. But the reward MuddlingThrough got for his good deed amounts to about the same thing...discrimination. We've got to stop it. Laws are just dandy, but somehow we have to educate the haters if we ever hope to live in peace and harmony.

Far too many people think White Trash when they hear of 2 people living together without the "benefit" of marriage. Far too many people automatically dismiss anything good in people with less than lily white skin. And in too many people the term homosexual implies to them the same thing Frankenstein implies to me. Humans are born fearing those different from themselves and ignorance keeps them in that place for life. We can't legislate or scream at them loud enough to make them see the light. They must be educated out of their fears. How to do this? I don't know. But it's the only way to loosen these ignorant fears that apparently seem as real to the haters as the sunshine coming thru my window as I type.

Thank you MuddlingThrough for your comment at 9:33am.

Thanks, DBI. You got my point.

It was that, when the state or court begins to interfere in a family's disposition of matters like eldercare, and when it does so freely simply because the person providing the care happens to be gay and the judge happens to be homophobic, the inevitable next step is that it will interfere more widely.

And this initiated act is all about that kind of interference.

The one aspect of my whole story re: my care of my mother that consistently grabs lawyers' attention both in-state and outside AR is that NO ONE in my family ever complained about the care my partner and I gave my mother. In fact, my mother's sisters told me repeatedly that they were deeply grateful for the care, because my mother would have died, left to her own devices, in her state of dementia.

Not only did NO ONE in my family complain, all sent letters to the homophobic judge informing her that they were not only pleased with the care we were providing, but found it outstanding. We were told the same by a nurse who gave my mother home care--namely, that in all her years of visiting homes caring for an aged person with dementia, she had never seen anyone cared for so well.

Despite all this, under the guise of "protecting" my mother's financial resources, the judge 1) apportioned a healthy payment to an ad litem attorney who was not needed at all, 2) she took weeks to approve a request to place my mother an expensive nursing home when her doctor recommended this (and why would I have chosen the most expensive, if I were coveting her resources?), and 3) when my mother died, after several years of living with us and then being in a nursing home, when she could have incurred no debts, the judge left the estate open, with a hefty sum going to the bank monthly for handling her finances.

Protecting family? Keeping it together? Affirming a family's decisions about how best to care for an aging family member with dementia? Protecting the resources of the aging parent?

It was about none of those, in the end. It was about the judge's disdain for a gay couple and her attempt to imply that we couldn't be providing good care for my mother, and that we had to have some self-serving motive in doing so. This outraged and hurt my entire family.

And it happened in Arkansas, and there was nothing I could do about it, when the Judicial Disciplinary Committee, which was then headed by an equally homophobic person, refused to act on my complaint.

Can you believe Jerry Cox said this, "The children of Arkansas should never be used to promote the social or political agenda of any special interest group."

Is this not what he is doing?
http://adoptionact.familycouncilactioncommittee.com/index.asp?PageID=14

The question is why do we have children that needs to be adopted?
Where do they come from?