State: Judge upholds Florida ban on gay adoption

Gays and lesbians in Florida who want to be parents suffered a major setback Thursday when a federal judge in Miami upheld Florida's 24-year-old law banning adoptions by homosexuals.

U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King wrote that the plaintiffs who challenged the law -- including a gay man once named foster parent of the year -- failed to shake the state's contention "that the best interest of the child is to be raised by a married family."

That meant they failed in their effort to prove the law violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

King ruled the plaintiffs didn't show that homosexual couples "are equivalently stable, are able to provide proper gender identification, or are no more socially stigmatizing than married heterosexual families."

"Obviously this is a devastating ruling," said Nadine Smith of Equality Florida, a statewide human rights organization based in Tampa. Supporters of the challenge to Florida's law, which has been called the toughest anti-gay adoption measure in the country, said they would ask the judge to reconsider.

Anthony Verdugo, chairman of the Christian Coalition in Miami-Dade County, lauded the decision.

"There is no evidence scientifically ... to indicate that homosexual homes are as stable as married, two-parent families, generally speaking," he said.

Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Cecka Green issued a terse one-sentence statement on the state's victory in the politically sensitive case: "The department is pleased that the court upheld the laws that the Legislature passed."

The plaintiffs in the case included:

Steven Lofton, a registered nurse who has been raising three HIV-infected children as a foster parent.

Douglas E. Houghton Jr., a clinical nurse specialist who is the legal guardian of a child under an arrangement with the boy's father.

Wayne LaRue Smith and Daniel Skahen, who have been foster parents together and who applied to be adoptive parents for children in the care of the state.

The judge did not criticize the plaintiffs as parents; quite the opposite. He said he did not doubt "a deeply loving and interdependent relationship" exists between Lofton and his foster children, and Houghton and the child of whom he is guardian; and that both men share emotional ties with the children that are "as close as those between biological parents."

In fact, he said the loving and close relationship between them was so obvious there was no need for a trial to prove it; his ruling on their lawsuit came as a summary judgment in favor of the state. However, he said, that closeness didn't mean the relationship that Lofton and Houghton had with their foster children was "sufficiently akin to the concept of family to warrant constitutional protection."

Foster care, he pointed out, is designed as a temporary arrangement. He rejected the plaintiffs' argument that breaking up the foster family violated the due process clause of the Constitution.

Foster homes are temporary placements for children who are victims of abuse or neglect. After staying in foster care, children are supposed to either go back to their families or on to new adoptive parents.

Although Florida law bans adoptions by gay and lesbian people, both singles and couples, no law prevents them from being foster parents. "It is allowed, and we do have some foster parents that are openly gay," said Elaine Fulton Jones, spokeswoman for the non-profit group Family Continuity, which handles adoption and other matters in Pinellas and Pasco counties.

While the ruling isn't likely to immediately change custody arrangements for the families in these cases, it leaves open the possibility, for various reasons, that they might lose the children in the future.

King wrote in his ruling that the state justified the law by saying it reflected "the Legislature's right to legislate public morality." But King disagreed, saying the government cannot be "singling out a group of citizens for disfavor simply because it morally disapproves of them."

The judge found more credence, however, in the state's argument that it's better for children to be raised in homes with two-parent married families. "Even couples married less than two years are scrutinized particularly carefully," he wrote. Unmarried heterosexual couples are not allowed to adopt, he pointed out. (Unmarried individuals can).

Although the plaintiffs in this case were people who wanted to adopt children in DCF foster care, the law banning homosexual adoption also affects children placed through private adoption agencies.

"It is blatantly homophobic, and there's no other rational basis for it than that," said Elizabeth Schwartz, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers. "It was enacted in the hysterical wake of Anita Bryant in 1977, and unfortunately her effects have been long lasting."

But Casey Walker, a lawyer who represented the Department of Children and Families, said "The law is perfectly constitutional as a legislative policy choice."

Nadine Smith said the losers in this case are children who want permanent homes but are forced to remain in the foster care system, hoping someone will come in to give them permanent homes. "There are children who would have been placed who will not be because the pool of adoptive parents is limited."

Verdugo of the Christian Coalition refused to accept that possibility and said that if children are languishing in foster care it was only "because of governmental bureaucracy or inefficiency."

Considering that the court found the law does not violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution, "I think what that says to me is that if this law has got to change, it's got to be by the Legislature," said state Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach.

Her view of the chances? "I think it would have a hard time getting a hearing."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk