Poll: Most Arkansans Favor Law To Ban Adoption, Foster Parenting By Gays
Last updated Tuesday, October 30, 2007 8:43 PM CDT in News
By John Lyon
THE MORNING NEWS
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LITTLE ROCK -- A slim majority of Arkansans -- 53 percent -- favor laws that would prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting or serving as foster parents, results of a poll conducted by University of Arkansas researchers show.
The annual Arkansas Poll also shows 41 percent of Arkansans favor laws that would make it more difficult to get an abortion and 57 percent are convinced global warming is for real.
The university's Survey Research Center randomly surveyed 754 adult Arkansans by telephone Oct. 7-18, and the poll's margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.
The poll found that 53 percent of Arkansans favor laws that would prohibit foster parenting by gays and lesbians, and the same percentage favor laws that would prohibit adoption by gays and lesbians. Forty-two percent of respondents said they opposed such laws. The remaining 5 percent either did not know or refused to answer.
"This is good news for our effort," said Jerry Cox, executive director of the Family Council. The conservative Christian group is seeking to place an initiated act on the 2008 general election ballot that would prohibit unmarried couples from adopting or serving as foster parents in Arkansas.
The Family Council's proposal is worded differently from the poll questions -- it would apply to all unmarried couples regardless of sexual orientation -- but Cox said the poll results bode well for the proposal's chances.
He noted that in last year's poll, which contained different questions, 66 percent of respondents said they personally disapproved of gays and lesbians serving as foster parents but only 46 percent said they favored a law to ban gays and lesbians from being foster parents.
"It appears public support for our initiated act is growing," Cox said.
Janine Parry, associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas and director of the poll, questioned how good the news really is for the Family Council.
"I would think that when you start out on something like that, in terms of your own resources and what it is that you're going to have to mobilize, you'd probably want to see something other than such a tight split," Parry said.
In response to other poll questions:
* 16 percent said gay couple should be allowed to legally marry.
* 27 percent said gay couples should be allowed to form civil unions or domestic partnerships but not legally marry.
* 51 percent said there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple's relationship.
In 2004, Arkansas voters approved by a 3-1 margin a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
On the issue of abortion, 41 percent of respondents said they favor laws that would make it more difficult to get an abortion, 13 percent said they favor laws that would make it easier to get an abortion and 36 percent said no change should be made to existing abortion laws.
On global warming, the poll found that 29 percent of Arkansans are "completely convinced" that global warming is actually happening, 28 percent are "mostly convinced," 21 percent are "not so convinced" and 17 percent are "not at all convinced."
"I think that's really great news," said April Ambrose of the Arkansas Climate Awareness Project, a group that supports policies to fight global warming. "It's actually pretty consistent with what we've seen with other polling."
Forty-four percent said global warming was an urgent problem requiring immediate attention, 44 percent said it was a longer-term problem requiring more study and 5 percent said it was not a problem.
Confusingly, when respondents were asked to rate the urgency of addressing global warming, a larger percentage said it was a problem than said it was even occurring.
Parry said the apparent contradiction may be a result of the way the latter question was worded. Respondents were asked whether global warming was an immediate problem or a short-term problem and were not given the option of saying it was not a problem at all, although 5 percent volunteered that answer, she said.
"That's what we call a forced choice. If I had to do it again, I would do it differently," Parry said.
Earlier this year, the state Legislature created a commission to study global warming and recommend policies to address the issue. The Arkansas Poll asked what the state's policies should be, relative to the policies of other states.
Twenty-seven percent said the state should be on the leading edge in creating policies on global warming, 47 percent said the state should adopt policies that have been shown to be effective and sensible in other states, and 16 percent said the state should resist the temptation to join the global warming bandwagon.
Again, the results appear contradictory: The percentage of people who believe Arkansas should have policies on global warming is larger than the percentage who believe global warming is happening.
Parry said the apparent contradictions may be a sign of confusion on the issue.
"If you're looking for consistency in American public opinion, and especially on a quote-unquote 'new' issue, I think you're going to be disappointed," she said.
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