Gay couple adopt child despite ban in Florida

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 10/4/08 at 9:53pm

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081004/NEWS01/81004029/1075

Two months after the foster child came to live in Wayne LaRue Smith’s two-story Key West home, the brown-eyed 5-year-old boy looked up from the kitchen table and, in a plaintive voice, asked what seemed a simple question.

“Will you be my daddy?”

At first, Smith, a foster father who has cared for 33 children in state custody, could not say yes.

Smith, who is openly gay, could raise other people’s children. But in Florida, the only state that outright bans all gay people from adopting, he could never adopt a child of his own.

Until now.

Last month, a Monroe Circuit judge became only the second judge in Florida history to allow a gay man or lesbian to adopt a child.

Smith’s may be a pyrrhic victory. Though Circuit Judge David John Audlin Jr.’s order will stand, it likely will hold little sway over future cases, scholars say. Moreover, the state attorney general’s office will not appeal the order, meaning it will never be reviewed by a higher court.

With another legal challenge set to begin soon in Miami — one that is being contested — Audlin’s order could become a historical footnote.

To Smith and his new son, though, it has the power of a landmark decision, he said.

“I knew that in our hearts, from that moment on that, one way or another, we were going to answer that question ’yes,”’ Smith said. “It’s seven years later, but now we can.

“It was a defining moment,” Smith said of the boy’s request seven years ago. “There are moments in life I won’t ever forget. In that instant there was nothing I wanted more than to say yes. But this crazy state I live in won’t let me.”

The attorney general’s office, which is defending the adoption ban in the Miami case next month, has argued in court records they are upholding public morality and providing for the healthy development of foster children by ensuring they are raised by dual-sex parents.

The state did not defend the ban, however, in Audlin’s court.

In a strongly worded 67-page order signed Aug. 29, Audlin wrote that Florida’s 1977 gay adoption ban arose out of “unveiled expressions of bigotry” when the state was experiencing a severe backlash to demands for civil rights by gay people in Miami.

“Disqualifying every gay Floridian from raising a family, enjoying grandchildren or carrying on the family name, based on nothing more than lawful sexual conduct, while assuring child abusers, terrorists, drug dealers, rapists and murderers at least individualized consideration,” Audlin wrote, was so “disproportionately severe” that it violates the state and U.S. constitutions.

Wayne LaRue Smith, 53, is an unlikely iconoclast. He grew up in Reno, Nev., and enlisted in the Air Force while the Vietnam War still was being fought. He was stationed in the Four Corners area of Arizona, where he helped train bombers at a radar bomb scoring site in the desert.

Smith earned degrees from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona’s law school, and moved to South Florida in 1988. He met his partner, Dan Skahen, a real estate broker, at a volunteer leadership workshop in March 1992. Smith practices commercial law.

In testimony this summer, Smith called himself “borderline boring.”

Even before 1999, the two men discussed having a family together. But that year, they took the first concrete steps. They enrolled in a Department of Children & Families pre-adoption course and began the screening process to adopt a child from the state’s foster care system. Smith said they were aware of the ban.

“We didn’t actually set out to be foster parents,” Smith said. “We set out to become adoptive parents.”

But during one of the training classes, Smith and Skahen were told of the state’s “desperate” need for foster parents. The men had an epiphany. They could satisfy their desire to raise a family, and provide shelter and nurturing to an abused or neglected child at the same time.

And because the state does not restrict gay people from fostering, Smith and Skahen became instant dads.

The two men quickly established a routine, beginning with a child’s first night at the house with the white picket fence.

New children would be encouraged to swim in the family pool. Smith and Skahen found the water was comforting to the youngsters, and the children discovered they were safe there, they said.

[SweetQintheLights]

Posted: 10/4/08 at 10:02pm

That's strange about the ban.
I live in Ft. Lauderdale and work in a 4th grade classroom. One of the girls in the class was adopted and has two mothers, legally.

[madbrian]

Posted: 10/4/08 at 10:07pm

Are you certain it was a Florida adoption? Could have adopted in another state, then moved to Florida.

[SweetQintheLights]

Posted: 10/4/08 at 10:13pm

madbrian, I guess anything could be but I assume it was Florida since I do know the child was born and raised in Florida.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 10/4/08 at 10:40pm

I would assume the girl is legally adopted about only one of the women and her sexuality wasn't brought into question. It's widely known that gay parents can foster but never adopt in Florida. Bravo to this judge.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/5/08 at 2:06am

Excuse me, I think you mean activist judge.

[winston89]

Posted: 10/5/08 at 2:16am

I have heard of situations of same sex couples where one of them adopted as a single parent but the kid lived with both of them.