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After a four-day trial that ended Monday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman will decide whether a 54-year-old North Miami man can legally adopt the half brothers he’s fostered since 2004.
Frank Martin Gill is challenging the 1977 state law, passed during the height of Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign, which bars gay people from adopting children in Florida. On Monday, the four-day trail against the state’s Department of Children and Families came to a close.
The case comes on the wake of a separate ruling by Monroe County (Key West) Circuit Judge David Audlin that gave Wayne LaRue Smith the right to adopt a 13-year-old foster child. Smith had been the boy’s foster parent since 2001. In that case, the judge issued a statement that the law was unconstitutional, although his ruling did not affect the law at the state level.
In this more recent case, Gill was represented by a team of ACLU attorneys led by Robert Rosenwald, director of the ACLU of Florida’s LGBT Advocacy Project.
Rosenwald told the Blade the case could reverse the anti-gay adoption law depending on whether state attorneys appeal, if the case is won by Gill.
If the state appealed the case, it would then be argued before the Florida Supreme Court. A favorable Supreme Court ruling could change the law without passing legislation through the State Legislature.
However, officials from the Florida Attorney General’s office have said that the state would not announce whether it would appeal until Lederman makes her ruling.
Rosenwald did not comment on specifics of the trial, but he said he felt confident that Gill will win the right to adopt.
The ACLU brought eight expert witnesses whom Rosenwald called “the world’s leading authorities on children’s welfare,” to testify that children raised by gay parents fare as well if not better that children raised by straight parents.
Rosenwald said the state’s case, led by Assistant State Attorney Valerie J. Martin, argued “all of the same old stereotypes” of gay people being unstable, having multiple partners, and being child molesters.
“All of their arguments were disproved,” Rosenwald said.
Gill and his partner have been raising the siblings since 2004, when their mother lost parental rights due to drug use and refusing to testify against their father who abused them.
A state agency placed the boys with Gill. Since then the family has formed a bond, and Gill has said he will be their father no matter what happens.
Gill declined to be interviewed for this article, but said he will communicate with the media in the near future.
The Monroe County ruling, unchallenged by the state, is not legally binding. But it can be persuasive on future adoption cases, Rosenwald said.
“What is at stake in this case is the children of Florida having good homes where they are loved and nurtured,” Rosenwald said.
Judge Lederman is expected to rule on the Miami case by Nov. 25.
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