Source: Florida court decision [pdf], Orlando Sentinel, St. Petersburg Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, OpEd News
It's a contemporary Christmas tale that has all the tear-jerker elements required for the that literary genre.
Two boys -- one four years old, the other just four months old -- lived a dreadful life with their biological parents, both crack addicts who mostly ignored the children.
The boys were freed from that hellish life during Christmas season, 2004, when a state child-services worker removed them from the home.
The older boy -- called "John Doe" in this telling of the tale -- wore only an dirty adult T-shirt when he was removed from the home. His feet were crammed into sneakers four sizes too small "that seemed more like flip-flops than shoes".
He suffered from a severe case of ringworm for which his parents had been given medication. But the medicine to treat John's scalp was unopened and expired when child-abuse investigator took him from the home along with his brother who is called "James Doe" in the tale.
James suffered from an untreated ear infection. Medicine for that condition was also found in the home, but it was nearly unused.
John didn't speak and "seemed depressed and presented a void, unresponsive demeanor and appearance."
According to the investigator, John's only concern was "changing, feeding, and caring for his baby brother." The four-year-old who did not speak was the infant's main caretaker, according to the investigator.
The investigator wanted to find them a caring home for Christmas. He turned to a foster parent with a Bachelor in Psychology and Masters Degree in Public Health who had taken in several challenging cases before. The investigator urged him to help temporarily in this difficult case.
"On that December evening, John and James left a world of chronic neglect, emotional impoverishment and deprivation to enter a new world, foreign to them, that was nurturing, safe, structured, and stimulating."
This true-life Christmas tale is told in an often riveting 53 page court decision written by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman, who ruled last week that the boys could be adopted by their foster father, 47-year-old Frank Martin Gill.
Four year after they first entered the home, in another Christmas season, the two boys enjoy a healthy childhood in the home of Gill, his partner "Tom Roe", and Roe's son Tom, Jr.
"John and James have lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same school, day care and aftercare since their arrival in the [Gill-Roe] home," Lederman writes. "As a result, each child has created friendships from school and in the neighborhood. John and James are closely bonded to Tom Roe, Jr., and their extended family. The boys consider [Gill's] and Roe’s parents, brothers and sisters their grandparents, uncles, and aunts. The extended family sends the boys gifts for their birthdays and the holidays. Roe’s mother, who lives in Tampa, visits the family regularly."
It's the kind of happy ending that should be the final act for such a Christmas tale, but -- as at least three op-ed columns printed Sunday recount -- it isn't the final chapter, even after Lederman's order approving adoption and what should be a permanent home for the boys.
It isn't the final chapter because Gill and Roe are gay, and in Florida, thanks to a 30-year-old law, gay people can't adopt children under any circumstance.
It isn't the final chapter because, as Mike Thomas recounts in an Orlando Sentinel commentary, the state is appealing Lederman's ruling.
Culture warriors will battle against the 'best interest of children' in Florida adoption case [contd.]
Thomas explains,
Nobody from the Department of Children and Family Services will dispute that the children are in an ideal situation. The department knows it. Everybody associated with this case knows it.
But this isn't about what's best for John and James. It's about a political battle between adults over gay rights.
And if two little boys have to be destroyed in the process, so be it.
The Christmas-season challenge to this happy family is decried in a number of columns this week. In a syndicated Chicago Tribune column, Steve Chapman writes that Florida's legal challenge to Gill's adoption of the boys is part of the latest challenge to LGBT folks by culture warriors -- a challenge that was nowhere more heartless than in an Arkansas ballot initiative adopted in November that bans unmarried couples from the foster system altogether.
On Nov. 4, Arkansas voters approved a ban on adoption by unmarried couples. The purpose of the ballot measure, according to the Family Council Action Committee, was "to blunt a homosexual agenda that's at work in other states and that will be at work in Arkansas unless we are proactive about doing something about it."
On Nov. 25, a court in Florida pointed out something that the Family Council Action Committee and other anti-gay groups somehow manage to overlook: Allowing gay couples to adopt is much less about protecting gays than protecting children.
St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn E. Blumner writes,
Judge Lederman ... has offered us the best of what judges can bring to society: a repudiation of laws that are a malignant manifestation of the bigotry of their time.
Florida's ban on gay adoption passed in 1977. Now, it has been judicially recognized that there is no rational basis for this kind of sweeping intolerance encoded in law. As Lederman said, "Sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent."
Gill and his life partner were touted as "model parents" by the children's guardian ad litem, who visited the boys monthly for years and called the Gill home "one of the most caring and nurturing placements" he has ever encountered. Lederman found that Gill "is an exceptional parent to John and James who have healed in his care."
In a Friday editorial, Miami Herald writes,
When stripped of all its emotional and legal baggage, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Cindy Lederman's decision Tuesday allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster children boils down to this: She did what was best for the children.
It is too bad -- and in this case, a tragic miscalculation -- that the Department of Children & Families doesn't see the issue this way. The DCF, which claims as its mantra to always act in the best interest of children, has unwisely decided to stand against allowing two loving parents to continue caring for two damaged boys whom they have painstakingly nurtured to good health. Instead, the DCF has asked the state attorney general's office to appeal the decision, which challenges Florida's ban on adoption by gays. Instead of standing up for the well-being of children, the DCF embraces Florida's position of state-supported bias against gays.
And Lederman did not make the decision lightly. During a four-day closed trial, she heard the best arguments that opponents of adoption could bring against the case she was hearing. A wide array of expert witnesses appeared before her to testify on both sides of the case.
One of the star witnesses for the state, which opposed Gill's adoption of the boys, was Dr. George Rekers, a clinical psychologist who is also an ordained Baptist minister.
Rekers testified that homosexual adults are unfit as adoptive parents because they are more likely to suffer from depression, and other emotional deficits, and tend to have a larger number of partners over their lives.
Lederman called discounted the value of his testimony:
Dr. Rekers’ beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.
With the wide array of testimony and evidence presented at the trial, the judge concludes,
Based on the evidence presented from experts from all over this country and abroad, it is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person’s ability to parent. Sexual orientation no more leads to psychiatric disorders, alcohol and substance abuse, relationship instability, a lower life expectancy or sexual disorders than race, gender, socioeconomic class or any other demographic characteristic.
On her way to declaring the law banning adoption by a gay parent unconstitutional, Lederman further concludes,
There is no question, the blanket exclusion of gay applicants defeats Florida’s goal of providing dependent children a permanent family through adoption. The exclusion causes some children to be deprived of a permanent placement with a family that is best suited to meet their needs.
Lederman's decision in this case may be more compelling to appellate courts than similar rulings might be because the judge, herself, considered a noted legal expert on the issues.
OpEd News recounts her credentials:
Parental presence is one concern of Judge Lederman, a fierce child advocate who gained national attention in 2003 when she launched the Miami Safe Start Initiative, with the help of Dr. Joy Osofsky, an expert in early child development.
NPR called the initiative, "some of the most innovative intervention programs for young mothers and infants in the dependency-court setting today. Recognized by child welfare experts as 'pioneering,' the Lederman programs are court-initiated, court-administered and aimed at helping babies and toddlers as soon as they come into the dependency court system. The centerpiece of the court's initiative consists of 25 weeks of intensive, one-on-one therapy between mothers and their babies, and also includes other parent-support services such as transportation, school and job placement, developmental screenings for all infants and toddlers and the first court-based Early Head Start program in the country."
As Chapman notes in Chicago Tribune, Lederman firmly came down on the side of the best interests of John and James, Gill's and Roe's children in issuing its ruling. But it's not a ruling that right-wing culture warriors and their advocates in Florida's legal system are willing to accept.
The Florida ban is simple and stark. It says, in effect, that a child may not be adopted by gays even when the adoption is in the best interest of the child. That's the main reason the court overturned it: It violates the rights of children and "causes harm to the children it is meant to protect."
Those who want to keep gays from adopting think that's a small price to pay for blocking the "homosexual agenda." But then, they're not the ones who will be paying it.
Source: Florida court ruling by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge [pdf]
State once turned to capable father figure, now fights him as Dad | Orlando Sentinel
Gay adoption: The real agenda | Chicago Tribune
Making a loving home for two brothers | St. Petersburg Times
Bias blinds DCF to these parents' good | Miami Herald
Florida Gay Adoption Ban Ruled 'Not Rational' | OpEd News