Lawyers want to repeal gay adoption ban

The Florida Bar's family law section voted to fight the ban. The Bar's governors will decide whether it can proceed.

TALLAHASSEE - Family law attorneys want to get rid of Florida's ban on adoptions by gays.

By unanimous vote, the executive council of the family law section of the Florida Bar has decided to push for a repeal.

"Fundamental fairness demands that healthy parents should be allowed to adopt regardless," said Evan Marks, a Miami attorney who became chairman of the section last month.

Florida is the only state in the nation with a complete ban on adoption by gays, whether single or as a couple.

Two states - Mississippi and Utah - prohibit only gay couples from adopting. Alabama's Supreme Court recently ruled against gay adoptions.

Florida's law, passed in 1977, has survived three state court challenges. Most recently, a Miami federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by four gay men seeking to adopt their foster children and in January the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the men.

The federal appeals court said the issue was one that should be decided in the Legislature.

Two years ago, nearly two dozen state lawmakers filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the federal lawsuit, defending the right of the Legislature to ban gay adoptions in order to "further the public moral sense." A bill filed in the state Senate this spring to repeal the ban went nowhere.

Mathew Staver, president of the conservative civil liberties legal group Liberty Counsel, said last week he would "vigorously oppose repealing the law."

Staver said it is irrefutable that children do best when they are raised by a mother and father.

"We should not experiment with the future of children by creating a policy that undermines children being raised by a mom and dad," he said.

Before the family law section can press lawmakers to repeal the ban on gay adoptions it needs approval from the Bar's board of governors.

Membership in the Bar is a requirement to practice law in the state.

The key issue the 52-member board of governors will consider later this summer is whether allowing the family law section to push for repeal of the ban is divisive in the legal community.

About 4,200 lawyers belong to the section, which is governed by an executive council of about three dozen attorneys.

Just five months ago, the executive council voted 17-7 against repealing the ban, based on the argument that pushing for a repeal would be divisive.

"I thought that was absolutely ridiculous," Marks said.

When he became chairman of the section in June, he brought the issue up again.

He told the section the theme of his one-year term would be "fundamental fairness for Florida families."

A dozen mainstream groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association and the American Psychiatric Association, have come out in support of allowing gay people to adopt.

"Once these groups got on board it had a snowball effect," Marks said.

The Bar's board of governors in 1991 rejected the idea of pushing for repeal of the gay adoption ban, deciding it would be too divisive an issue in the legal community. But Marks said he's optimistic the board will approve the position now. Orlando attorney Richard West, a former chairman of the family law section, thinks it will be an uphill battle to get the Legislature to repeal the ban. "But we feel it is important to try," West said.

[Last modified July 5, 2004, 23:26:10]