Adoption papers ready come to dixie...

From the NYTimes Online:

MIAMI — A Florida law that has banned adoptions by gay men and lesbians for over three decades is unconstitutional, a judge here ruled on Tuesday.
“The best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption,” the judge, Cindy S. Lederman of Miami-Dade Circuit Court, said in a 53-page decision. She said the law violated equal protection rights for children and their prospective parents.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said the state would appeal, and the case is likely to end up before the State Supreme Court.
The ruling on Tuesday will allow Frank Martin Gill, 47, a gay man from North Miami, to adopt two foster children whom he has raised since 2004. “Our family just got a lot more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving,” Mr. Gill said in a news release issued by the American Civil Liberties Union which represented him.
Robert Rosenwald, director of the LGBT Advocacy Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and one of the lawyers on the case, said, “The case means that these two boys won’t be torn from the only home that they’ve ever known,” said.
The state presented experts who argued that there was a higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse among same-sex couples, that their relationships were less stable than those of heterosexuals, and that their children suffered a societal stigma.
But lawyers for Mr. Gill presented evidence contradicting those contentions, which Judge Lederman found persuasive.
“It is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person’s ability to parent,” she wrote.
Mr. Rosenwald called the decision a huge victory for gay and lesbian parents and for almost 1,000 children in Florida waiting to be adopted.
“The court for the first time after hearing all of the evidence determined that the scientific evidence is crystal clear,” he said. “There is no dispute that children raised by gay parents fare just as well or better than children raised by straight parents.”

Prop 8 passes in California, gay adoption declared unConstitutional in Florida! Wouldn't it seem that the states should be reveresed in these two cases?

Well, as they say, when God closes a door, he opens a window: ban gay marriage and three weeks later, allow gay adoption. He does truly work in mysterious ways.

POLT Listening to "Unintended" by Muse

If God had wanted me to be on the ice, he would have made me a vodka martini. - Mike, Queer As Folk