Where are your results coming from? The Arkansas Secretary of State's website reports that it's 56.52% in favor of the act.

http://www.arelections.org/index.php?ac:show:contest_statewide=1&elecid=181&contestid=5

The Arkansas Times blog reports that only Pulaski County (Little Rock) is opposing Act 1 and "it can't overcome the balance of the state alone." It voted against Act 1 55-45.

The act only trails by 7,000 votes so hope isn't lost yet, but it's dwindling fast.

Currently: 57-43 in favor.

59-41 in favor with 15% of the counties reporting. The margin is 20,000.

I don't expect this one will be won. This is a sad day for Arkansas.

We worked hard to spread the word, but I guess that bigots are more powerful that reason.

I hope it will be challenged in the courts.

There is an insidious reason why states don't feel motivated to place their oversupply of foster children in good homes. A few years ago, I did an article on this subject for A & U Magazine. The Children's Services system is corrupted by the fact that it gets funded by federal money, and each state gets money "per head," for each individual child in the system. It works like the ADA in education, where each school gets federal money for each day that a child is in school...which motivates schools to minimize truancy as much as they can.

So Children's Services serves itself by seizing as many children as possible...which is why you read stories about children that are taken from their parents for seemingly specious and ridiculous reasons. The goal is numbers. The more children they have, the more federal money there is. It's really that simple.

So...does the state of Arkansas care one bit about placing foster children? Not one bit. Do they care that group homes are often overcrowded and rife with child abuse? Of course not. Neither does any other state.

In fact, making it an issue of "not wanting those bad gay people to adopt" is just a smokescreen for the real issue, which is...they're protecting their funding stream.

To illustrate how wrong-minded this is:

My parents divorced several years ago and while they have reconciled, they never remarried. If something were to happen to my sister, where would her two children go? According to Act 1, my parents, co-habitating as they are outside of a "valid" marriage, would be barred from adopting them.

It's either into the system or off with their (different) dead-beat dads? I shudder at the thought.

Act 1 is bad policy no matter how you look at it.