Good Morning ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to be here this morning with you to discuss an issue of vital importance to both the 3500 plus children languishing in Florida's foster care system waiting to be adopted, and to Florida's gay and lesbian parents who are forbidden by law from adopting them.

The statistics on kids unlucky enough to find themselves in the custody of the State of Florida are deeply disturbing. 36% of these children are in foster care for more than 4 years, and almost 80% wait for more than 2 years. Most of these children have endured at least 3 different foster care placements in this period of time, and roughly 25% leave the system not because they have been adopted, but because they reach their 18^th birthday.

Child welfare professionals agree that adoption serves an important social, emotional and psychological function by giving adopted children an opportunity to enter into stable and permanent parent-child relationships. A review of 20 years of literature found that the prevalence of psycho pathology among children in foster care is higher that the norm, even when compared with children who have similar backgrounds of deprivation. Within two to four years of leaving foster care only 54 percent of children had completed high school, over half were unemployed, 25% had been homeless, and 42% had given birth to or fathered a child. These dire results mandate that states work to ensure adoption of all children who do not have available biological parents.

Given the inarguable need for adoptive parents for the thousands of children who may never find the parents they so desperately need and want, it was initially hard for me, as a lesbian, to understand why debate on the subject of adoption by gay and lesbian parents is necessary. It seemed to me like a no-brainer, there are thousands of children needing homes in the state of Florida and there is a pool of prospective parents like me, stable, loving and decent people who are categorically denied the opportunity to provide the nurturing and secure homes these children so urgently need.

One would hope that the State of Florida would do everything in its power to find homes for the children languishing in its foster care system. In fact, the child welfare system is required to expend a great deal of time and energy expanding the pool of eligible adoptive parents, so that it even provides financial subsidies to prospective families who would otherwise be unable to adopt. Yet, question II-G on the form prospective parents are required to fill out in Florida requires all applicants to check "yes" or "no" to the statement: "I am a homosexual." Next to the question is a quote from Florida Statute 63.042(3) of the state law: "No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual." If a prospective adoptive parents answers the question "yes", or leaves it blank, he or she is not eligible for consideration as an adoptive parent. Period, end of story.

When I looked at the history of adoption in the U.S., I found that some debate was understandable given the fact that as recently as 1970, single people who applied to adopt were routinely turned down, and in fact, some states had laws banning adoption by single people. As the 1970s progressed, only 4% of parents adopting were single, but by the end of the 1980s and today, fully one third of the kids adopted from foster care were by single parents.

So, we have seen a relatively rapid change over the last 30 years, with the right to adopt almost exclusively reserved to married couples in 1970, to the landscape of today, where children are commonly placed in families that fall outside the traditional model of a married mother and father. Of course, its not only in the arena of child welfare that we have seen remarkable changes in societal understanding and tolerance over the last 30 years. Florida has a long history of morally disapproving of those who become intimate with members of other races, and of heterosexuals who become sexually intimate without marriage. It was as recently as 1964 that the State of Florida made fornication between interracial couples a felony instead of the misdemeanor crime it was when committed by couples of the same race. Florida's sodomy law applies equally to heterosexual couples as it does to homosexual couples, expressing the state's disapproval of non-procreative sex.

Seen in this historical context, it is not surprising that we still have resistence to the idea of adoption by gay and lesbian parents. The history of the law reveals that it was a direct expression of disapproval of gays in general. Florida's ban on gay adoption was only enacted in 1977 following the hysterical homophobic campaign led by the ex-beauty queen and songstress, Anita Bryant, which resulted in the repeal of Miami-Dade County's first ordinance protecting gays from discrimination. After the anti-gay adoption ban passed, its main sponsor, Sen. Curtis Peterson of Lakeland reminded everyone that the ban was part of a broader campaign against gays that he and Anita Bryant were waging. He said, and I quote, "The problem in Florida has been that homosexuals are surfacing to such an extent that they're beginning to aggravate the ordinary folks, who have a few rights of their own. We're trying to send them a message, telling them, ‘We're really tired of you. We wish you'd go back into the closet.'"

Twenty-five years later, over a dozen of the state legislators who voted in favor of the gay adoption ban in 1977, have signed affidavits stating that they were wrong and that they now support efforts to overturn or repeal the law. The nation's oldest, largest and most respected children's groups oppose Florida's ban on gay adoption. No mainstream health or child welfare group supports broadly restricting gay parenting and in fact these groups actively oppose such restrictions. . Listen to what they have to say: Child Welfare League of America: Gay/Lesbian adoptive applicants should be assessed the same as any other adoptive applicant. North American Council on Adoptable Children. Everyone with the potential to successfully parent a child is entitled to fair and equitable consideration regardless of sexual orientation. American Academy of Pediatrics. [We] recognize that a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health adjustment and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual. The Academy recommends that its pediatricians be familiar with the professional literature regarding gay and lesbian parents and their children, and that they advocate for initiatives that establish permanency through coparent and second parent adoption for children of same sex partners through the judicial system, legislation and community education. The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers all have lengthy positions concluding that there is no empirical support for any presumption that a gay or lesbian parent's sexual orientation, or contact with that parents same sex partner, is or will be harmful to the children, and that all of the credible studies have shown that the children of gay parents are as likely to be healthy and well adjusted as children raised in heterosexual households.

In 1999, for the first time in the history of the anti-gay adoption law, a federal court has been asked whether it is constitutional to broadly ban gay adoption. The lawsuit says that Florida's gay adoption ban violates the constitutional rights of children who need homes and gay people who want to adopt. The case charges first that the law treats them unequally, because gay people are the only people who are not considered as individuals when they seek to adopt and are instead absolutely barred. The case also charges that the law violates the integrity of families in which kids are raised over the long term by gay foster parents. Those kids deserve to be treated as families, the case says, but Florida law treats them as strangers.

The state responds by saying that the unequal treatment is justified because of its wish to express its disapproval of gay people. As a backup, the state says that it is possible to think that it would be better for kids to be raised by a married mother and father. Finally, the state says that families with gay foster parents won't really be hurt by the adoption ban, because the state won't interfere with those families.

It is important to note that the state of Florida routinely places children in the homes of known gays as foster parents, as well as appointing gays as legal guardians of children. Not only that, but the State of Florida officials deposed in connection with the lawsuit have testified that there has not been one case of a child being removed from a gay foster household for reasons of abuse or neglect. And common sense dictates the conclusion that even if it is preferable for a child to be adopted by a married couple, banning adoption by otherwise eligible gay parents in no way will increase the pool of eligible married couples. The final judgment of the Federal Appeals court for the 11th Circuit is expected this year. In the meantime, each year 3500 kids in foster care remain in limbo, and the State of Florida refuses to allow them to be adopted by the gay and lesbian parents who are willing and eager to provide them with the stable nurturing and loving family relationship that they so urgently need.