Florida ban on gay adoptions ruled unconstitutional

According to an article in today's online version of the Miami Herald a Miami-Dade circuit judge today declared Florida's 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional. Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman permitted 47-year-old Frank Gill to adopt the 4- and 8-year-old boys he and his partner have raised since 2004.

"Based on the evidence presented from experts from all over this country and abroad," Lederman wrote, "it is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent. Sexual orientation no more leads to psychiatric disorders, alcohol and substance abuse, relationship instability, a lower life expectancy or sexual disorders than race, gender, socioeconomic class or any other demographic characteristic."

The state's Attorney General's office announced they would appeal the decision to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami.

This is actually the second ruling this year to declare the state's blanket ban on adoption by gay men and lesbians unconstitutional. In August, Monroe Circuit Judge David John Audlin Jr. wrote that Florida's 1977 gay adoption ban arose out of "unveiled expressions of bigotry".

"Disqualifying every gay Floridian from raising a family, enjoying grandchildren or carrying on the family name, based on nothing more than lawful sexual conduct, while assuring child abusers, terrorists, drug dealers, rapists and murderers at least individualized consideration," Audlin wrote, was so "disproportionately severe" that it violates the state and U.S. Constitutions.