Family Council’s Greatest Hits from 2024

Family Council

Since 1989, Family Council has worked to promote, protect, and strengthen traditional family values in Arkansas. We’ve supported good legislation, opposed bad laws, promoted religious freedom, defended the sanctity of innocent human life, stood up for traditional marriage, blunted the radical LGBT agenda, and much more. Family Council’s team has grown this year — and so has our work. Here’s a brief look at a few of Family Council’s “Greatest Hits” from 2024.

Keeping Abortion Out of Arkansas. Pro-abortion forces worked relentlessly to write abortion into the Arkansas Constitution this year, but pro-lifers fought back. The pro-life “Decline to Sign” campaign  likely cost the Arkansas Abortion Amendment 40,000 petition signatures and tens of thousands of dollars. It also likely kept abortion off the ballot in Arkansas, because the state supreme court invalidated petition signatures collected by paid canvassers but not the petition signatures that volunteers collected. If the pro-abortion volunteers had collected more signatures this past summer, their amendment might have made the November ballot. Fortunately, our team, Arkansas Right to Life, and other pro-life groups were able to spread the word about this bad amendment. Pro-lifers worked to defeat the abortion petition drive in Arkansas, and we were able to keep abortion out of the state.

Supporting Homeschoolers in Arkansas. Homeschooling has surged to record levels in our state. Today, more than 32,000 students homeschool in Arkansas. Our homeschool office, the Education Alliance, worked daily this year to help these students and their families with everything from getting started homeschooling to applying for college — and everything in between. We also helped homeschoolers understand how they can receive funding from the state’s new LEARNS Act this year. We are glad we get to serve homeschool families in our state.

Fighting Marijuana’s Expansion in Arkansas. Marijuana industry insiders spent nearly $2 million working to place a marijuana amendment on the ballot. Our team was able to build a powerful statewide grassroots network of county coordinators to inform people about this fatally flawed amendment. We printed and distributed about half a million church bulletin inserts. Had the Arkansas Supreme Court not disqualified this amendment, we were ready with our statewide campaign, and I believe our side would have prevailed as we did when Arkansas voters rejected legalizing marijuana just two years ago. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the Arkansas  Supreme Court ruled that the marijuana amendment was legally flawed and that votes for it should not be counted. Our efforts against marijuana have positioned us to successfully fight to keep marijuana out of Arkansas.

Securing $2 Million in Funding for Pregnancy Help Organizations. One of the best things Family Council has ever done is help pregnancy resource centers secure publicly-funded grants. In 2022 we worked with former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and with our friends in the Arkansas Legislature to pass a budget measure providing a million dollars for pro-life pregnancy help organizations in Arkansas. In 2023 and 2024 we worked with Governor Sanders and with lawmakers to secure additional appropriations for these organizations. But this year we were able to expand the program and provide $2 million in grant funding. This grant money will provide real support to women in Arkansas with unplanned pregnancies, making it less likely they will travel to other states for abortion. That is something to celebrate.

Uncovering Planned Parenthood’s New Abortion Facility Near the Arkansas Border. In May Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion provider — announced plans to build a new abortion facility in southeast Kansas, within driving distance of Northwest Arkansas. Family Council worked over the summer to locate the new abortion center. In August our team found public records showing Planned Parenthood had formed a limited liability company that quietly purchased and renovated a doctor’s office in Pittsburg, Kansas. We alerted our friends at national pro-life organizations and our pro-life friends in Kansas. Breaking this news before Planned Parenthood was open for business helped pro-lifers begin mobilizing in Pittsburg before abortions were performed. By the time Planned Parenthood opened the facility, pro-life sidewalk counselors and prayer warriors were there as well. In August, Family Council was able to participate in a joint press conference outside the abortion facility, where we shared the truth about abortion and called on people to oppose Planned Parenthood’s agenda. This was a significant accomplishment.

Opposing Abortion and Other Bad Policies in Federal Court. Besides working to keep abortion out of Arkansas, Family Council also joined multiple amicus briefs in federal court this year. These amicus briefs helped defend good, pro-life laws in states like West Virginia and Idaho, and they helped oppose bad, pro-abortion policies the Biden Administration has promoted at the federal level. We are glad to be part of this important work.

Distributing Tens of Thousands of Voter’s Guides During 2024 Election Cycle. One of our goals is to educate voters so they can vote wisely when they head to the polls. The Arkansas Voter’s Guide is one way Family Council does that. Since 1990, we have surveyed candidates running for office in Arkansas, and we have published their responses. Our guide helps voters understand where candidates stand on issues like abortion, homeschooling, marijuana legalization, immigration policy, and so on. The guide also contains summaries of the ballot measures. This year we distributed more than 75,000 printed copies of the Arkansas Voter’s Guide, and our digital guide at ArkansasVotersGuide.com reached another 11,000 people. Many churches, homeschool groups, and other organizations share our voter’s guides with their members. Altogether, our team estimates that we distributed enough voter’s guides in print, online, and via email and text message to reach more than 125,000 potential voters. All of that had a tremendous impact in Arkansas.

Forming the Church Ambassador Network. One of our goals for 2024 was to form a network of church leaders who would minister to elected leaders and partner with them to address the problems many of our communities face. This year we hired Jim Lagrone, D.Min., and Cade Daniel to carry out this initiative. Since then both Jim and Cade have traveled the state, meeting with ministers and building this network. We were able to form the Church Ambassador Network of Arkansas this year, and we have big plans for it in the coming year.

Mobilizing the Arkansas Justice Institute. This year we mobilized the Arkansas Justice Institute to provide a clear, Christian perspective on legal issues in Arkansas and network with likeminded attorneys across the state. We hired Stephanie Nichols to lead and serve as chief legal counsel for the Justice Institute. Stephanie has helped draft legislation, researched legal issues, and offered sound wisdom to our organization. We believe the work we accomplished this year will help bear good fruit at the Arkansas Legislature in 2025.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Erasing Women

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The following is adapted from a column that appeared in Family Council’s June / July update letter.

One of the strangest things about expecting a baby in this day and age is that it is no longer politically correct to say “pregnant woman” or “mother.” When you go to the CDC, Cleveland Clinic, Evidence Based Birth, or other data-driven medical websites to obtain reputable medical information about pregnancy, you find the term “pregnant people” rather than “pregnant women.” I find it harder to trust information that refers to me as a “birthing person” or “pregnant person” instead of a “pregnant woman” or “mother.” 

Some of our national political leaders likewise use the term “birthing person” to avoid saying “pregnant woman” or “mother,” and one of our Supreme Court justices could not say what a woman is because she is “not a biologist.” If science, law, and politics goes down this path of not telling the truth, then the consequences will ultimately be worse healthcare and fewer legal protections for women because our healthcare, political, and legal systems are embracing as truth something that is false. 

When the most intelligent and esteemed people among us can no longer say that women have babies, this tells us where we are in society with regard to rejecting God’s standards. We are getting so far down the line that we are rejecting the simplest, most basic truths. What could be more basic than the truth that women–not men–have babies? This is part of our “brave new world” that also erases women by letting physically stronger men play in their sports and win their awards. 

Sin can be simply defined as rebellion against God’s design and order, including rejecting what He has said in His Word .And because sin is a progression (James 1:14-15), there is always a next step. These are just some stops along a long line of progressively rejecting more and more of God’s design. We start with rejecting that God has a unique design for male and female ,and then we begin allowing children to attempt to medically change their sex–regardless of the irreversible and sterilizing medical consequences. Statistics show that girls are much more likely to make the decision to attempt to change their sex than boys. 

I can’t help but think that the worst form of “erasing women” is abortion, though. Mother Teresa is often credited with saying, “Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers.” Abortion deprives women of their incredible, life-giving power granted to them by God. There is simply nothing like the ability to grow new life within you and then bring new life into the world. A culture that promotes abortion really disempowers women by undermining women’s unique attributes as given by God. The ultimate erasing of women and mothers comes not just by the terms used, but by being in a culture where women miss out on their own children. I hope Arkansas makes the choice to reject the Arkansas Abortion Amendment and instead chooses to be a culture that invests in advancing and protecting women, motherhood, and innocent human life.

Stephanie Nichols is Director and Chief Legal Counsel for Arkansas Justice Institute, a division of Family Council.

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Arkansas Libraries Continue to Push Sexually Explicit Materials on Kids

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Above: The book It’s Perfectly Normal sits on display in the children’s section of the Craighead County Public Library in Jonesboro. The book contains inappropriate illustrations depicting nudity and sexual activity.

The following is adapted from a column that appeared in Family Council’s April update letter.

Public libraries and school libraries have been a source of contention in recent years. Parents in Arkansas—and throughout the nation—have discovered graphic sexual materials in the children’s section of their local libraries. 

It is important to note that progress has been made due to the dedicated efforts of parents, good librarians, and other community members interested in protecting the innocence of children.  However, there are still activists in local libraries who are intent on making sexual material available to children.  For example, the picture next to this column is from a display in the children’s section of the Craighead County Library last December.  The book It’s Perfectly Normal contains graphic pictures of same-sex and opposite-sex couples having sex, descriptions of anal sex, pictures of children masturbating, and more than 30 pictures of naked adults of various ages.  It also promotes abortion as a healthy choice. 

This book had been redesignated for shelving on a special shelf for parents and teachers rather than for circulation in the normal children’s shelving.  However, that did not keep staff members from going out of their way to still expose children browsing the shelves to graphic sexual materials.  A concerned parent noticed this book on display to kids and brought it to the attention of the children’s library director.  Thankfully, she removed it from the display, but how many kids may have been exposed before the book was reshelved?  

It’s a reminder of an eye-opening quote promoted on the Citizens Defending the Craighead County Library Facebook page by those fighting for a right to expose kids to explicit materials:  

“It was about kids learning that other kinds of sex existed, or that sex existed at all.” 

It should always be a parent’s right and choice about when to teach their kids about sex and what specific materials to use.  When did strangers begin to think they are the ones who have this right?   

The bottom line is that children’s sections of local libraries are still not safe places for children in Arkansas, and we have much work to do to restore libraries as places where children can safely explore the world of books in their own designated areas.  Libraries truly are community treasures, and good libraries and good librarians are a blessing.  That’s why Christians and others interested in safeguarding the innocence of children should not give up on our libraries.  

Family Council is grateful to Sen. Dan Sullivan for sponsoring Act 372 of 2023 to help deal with these important issues.  This good law prohibits giving or sending a child sexual material that is harmful to minors. It also removes exemptions for libraries in the state’s obscenity laws. Some Arkansas libraries have sued to block enforcement of Act 372, and Judge Timothy Brooks has put some sections of the law on a temporary hold pending a final ruling.  However, other helpful parts of the law remain in effect.  For example, a challenge process for obscene materials in school media centers and libraries remains in effect.  A provision that gives parents access to their children’s library records also remains in effect.  Amazingly, parents did not have this right of access under state law before the passage of Act 372.  Importantly, the section that removes language from state law that shielded school and library personnel from prosecution for disseminating obscene materials to kids also remains in effect.  I think we can all agree that no one deserves a legal exemption for knowingly providing obscene materials to kids.

Stephanie Nichols is Director and Chief Legal Counsel for Arkansas Justice Institute, a division of Family Council.

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