Wayne LaRue Smith (left) and his partner Daniel Skahen help their adopted son with his homework
Miami Herald photo by Carl JusteFlorida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) agreed Tuesday to provide state benefits to the adopted son of a Key West gay man, Miami Herald reports.
In August of 2008 a judge in Key West struck the first blow to Florida’s 1977 statute that forbids adoption by gay men and lesbians. Monroe Circuit Judge David J. Audlin signed a 67-page order declaring the law unconstitutional. Audlin's order cleared the way for a Key West lawyer, Wayne LaRue Smith, to adopt a boy he had been raising in foster care.
Since then, two other judges have also declared the adoption ban unconstitutional. One of those cases is now under appeal, and is now under review by a three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeals.
For technical reasons, DCF did not appeal Audlin’s ruling, but they have refused to provide Smith’s son with standard benefits offered to children adopted from the state’s care. Those benefits include health insurance and college tuition, the Herald reports.
On Tuesday, however, DCF lawyers did an about-face and agreed in writing to provide the benefits package.
Smith told Miami Herald reporter Carol Marbin Miller that his son is now getting the same benefits offered automatically to other children who are adopted from the state foster-care system.
“It means, finally, after 10 years, he gets what every other child in the same circumstance gets just by asking,” Smith said.
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