Florida Sucks SO Much
February 17, 2006: A few days ago, I reported that Florida was actually considering putting children before prejudice by allowing LGBT people to adopt when it is clearly in the best interest of the child. Mind you, this bill wasn’t a total repeal of the state’s ban on gay adoptions; it would just have given individual judges discretion in some cases.
Well, guess what. The sponsor of the bill pulled it when she realized she didn’t have enough votes to pass even this small step for Florida’s chldren.
Could Florida suck anymore?
This is from the Orlando Sentinel which puts the best possible spin on this utterly depressing and ugly situation:
Efforts to modify Florida’s ban against gay adoption are not dead, despite a state Senate committee’s decision to table the bill, the head of a gay-activist organization said Wednesday.
Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, said there still is a chance that the bill will be revived later in the legislative session: “It’s not dead. It’s not dead at all.”
The bill would have allowed a judge to permit a gay adoption if there were “clear and convincing evidence” that it would be in the child’s best interest.
It was tabled after the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, decided she did not have the votes on the Republican-dominated committee.
Smith said the personal testimonies in favor of ending the ban moved legislators on both sides of the issue.
“It’s a victory when, for the first time in 30 years, the Legislature finally had to confront how much harm this ban has inflicted,” Smith said. “We absolutely reached people in Tallahassee.”