Death Blow to Florida Adoption Ban?

Florida's Department of Children and Families decided on Tuesday to not challenge a recent appeals court decision that struck down the state's 33-year-old ban on gays adopting children.

The Associated Press reports that Florida's DCF will now amend its forms so prospective parents are not asked if they are gay. But the ban is not completely dead -- Florida's Republican attorney general, Bill McCollum, has until October 21 to appeal the case. McCollum, running for governor of Florida before being defeated in the primary by Rick Scott, is notorious for spending $120,000 in state money to hire antigay psychologist George Rekers as an expert witness defending the policy in the initial 2008 case in Miami-Dade circuit court. Miami-Dade circuit judge Cindy Lederman called Rekers's testimony biased, and it was largely discredited. In May, Rekers was discovered to have hired a gay prostitute to travel with him in Europe. The state's third district court of appeal upheld Lederman's decision last month.

If McCollum does appeal, he'll be doing so without the backing of the state's child welfare agency. For its part, DCF doesn't necessarily say it supports the court decisions, instead saying the rulings were so airtight it was pointless to try to get the case heard in Florida's supreme court.

"We had weighed an appeal to the Florida supreme court to achieve an ultimate certainty and finality for all parties. But the depth, clarity and unanimity of the DCA opinion -- and that of Miami-Dade judge Cindy Lederman's original circuit court decision -- has made it evident that an appeal would have a less than limited chance of a different outcome," said DCF spokesman Joe Follick. "The DCA opinion is binding on all trial courts and therefore provides statewide uniformity. The ban on gay adoption is unconstitutional statewide. We have created and implemented new application forms that drop the question about sexual orientation from adoption proceedings."