Former TV news anchor Charles Perez celebrated the end of Florida's gay adoption ban and looks back at the tireless efforts of many that brought us to this day.
COMMENTARY: At 12:21 p.m. on Thursday, Miami time, an e-mail came across my desktop. It read, “Victory! The Florida Law Banning Gay Adoption Is Unconstitutional!”
After sitting on it for 13 months, Florida’s third district court of appeal finally issued its ruling. Immediately, I forwarded the e-mail to my husband, Keith. Twenty minutes later he called me. “I couldn’t stop crying,” he said.
What had just happened was a momentous thing. The earth had shifted a bit.
Martin Gill and his partner just wanted to adopt the two boys they’d been fostering since 2004. They wanted to make the only stable home the boys had ever known permanent. You’d think it would have been an obvious choice and a speedy decision to reach. It wasn’t. Overturning established law is no easy thing to do. For Martin Gill, however, it was much more personal.
I’ve met Martin Gill. He is a gentle man with a strong sense of purpose — to love his family. For Rosie O’Donnell, it was the same when she helped lead the effort to overturn the state’s ban back in 2004. They took it to the voters and it failed. Cynthia Nixon has taken a similar stand, hoping to take the issue before Florida voters again in 2012. But if Thursday’s ruling teaches us anything, it is this: Rights and privileges for the few are rarely extended by the hand of the voter at the ballot box. That’s why we have the courts.
In America slavery did not end until 1865. Women did not gain the right to vote until 1920. Black students in Arkansas could not attend Little Rock Central High until 1957. And interracial marriage was not legal throughout the land until 1967. In each case change came without the consent of the majority. As the framers of our Constitution knew, justice should not always be up for a vote.
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