Editorial

Wait until the Supreme Court hears about this!

Last week, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals based in Atlanta upheld Florida’s statute banning adoptions by homosexuals in a unanimous 3-0 decision. The recent, seemingly unstoppable homosexual rights juggernaut was dealt a stunning setback in a Jan. 28, 2004, ruling that is marked by refreshing common sense — which is one reason why the U.S. Supreme Court is not likely to let it stand.

In Loften, et. al. v. Secretary of the Department of Children and Family, the Eleventh Circuit rejected claims by the homosexual lobby and American Civil Liberties Union of Florida that the Sunshine State’s law banning same-sex adoptions violates the United States Constitution. The law was claimed to be unconstitutional on three grounds: that the law violated rights to familial privacy, intimate association and family integrity under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment; that the law is undermined by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last summer in Lawrence v. Texas, which threw out that state’s anti-sodomy statute; and the appellants argued the law also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Eleventh Circuit squashed all three claims in a strongly written opinion affirming the right of the Florida legislature to protect children by limiting the type of persons who may adopt them.

This is the second defeat for the appellants on this law. In an August 30, 2001, ruling, Federal Judge James Lawrence King upheld Florida’s law, although in a less broadly written opinion which I argued at the time was cause for concern because of King’s rejection of the state’s right to legislate on the basis of morality. (For more on this decision, see, "Homosexuals should not be permitted to adopt," September 6, 2001, Florida Baptist Witness.) Because the Eleventh Circuit found that Florida demonstrated a rational basis for its law banning homosexual adoptions, the Circuit reasoned that it was unnecessary to resolve the question of whether the state may legislate on the basis of morality. Even so, the panel nevertheless cited several Supreme Court rulings and its own recent "precedent [that] has unequivocally affirmed the furtherance of public morality as a legitimate state interest."

Central to the Eleventh Circuit’s rationale for its decision were two important facts: there is no right to adopt and the state — through its elected representatives — has the right to determine qualifications for persons who seek to adopt children under the care of the state.

The court ruled: "We exercise great caution when asked to take sides in an ongoing public policy debate, such as the current one over the compatibility of homosexual conduct with the duties of adoptive parenthood. ... The State of Florida has made the determination that it is not in the best interests of its displaced children to be adopted by individuals who ‘engage in current, voluntary homosexual activity,’... and we have found nothing in the Constitution that forbids this policy judgment. Thus, any argument that the Florida legislature was misguided in its decision is one of legislative policy, not constitutional law."

Driving the point home by quoting a 1996 decision from the Fourth Circuit, the court concluded, "The legislature is the proper forum for this debate, and we do not sit as a superlegislature ‘to award by judicial decree what was not achievable by political consensus.’"

Absolutely correct!

"In this age of judicial activism, it is refreshing to see a Court assume its proper role and allow the people to set family policy," said Mathew D. Staver, president of Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

If only the U.S. Supreme Court would see things so clearly. And that brings us to the reason we should temper our sense of victory in the Eleventh Circuit’s decision: This is not likely to be the last time a federal court will rule on Florida’s ban on same-sex adoptions.

"I don’t think this decision is going to stand the test of time," the ACLU of Florida’s Howard Simon said in reaction to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision, according to a Miami Herald report. His colleague, Leslie Cooper, argued, "After [the Lawrence decision], we expected better."

Whether the ACLU of Florida decides to seek a hearing before the entire Eleventh Circuit or it appeals this case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, it’s very likely that this matter will be resolved ultimately by the nation’s highest court. And, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, notwithstanding the Eleventh Circuit’s interpretation, is plenty cause for concern about how it will rule on Florida’s law. (For more on the Lawrence decision, see, "Re-arming for the Culture War after Lawrence," July 3, 2003, Florida Baptist Witness.)

Although homosexual activists have repeatedly sought to produce scholarly studies that demonstrate that children reared by homosexuals fare no worse than those in heterosexual homes, these studies have been exposed for their bias and poor methodology. (For more information on the flawed studies, see, No Basis: What the Studies Don’t Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting, Marriage Law Project, Jan. 2001, http://www.marriagewatch.org/publications/nobasis.htm. For more on the dangers of homosexual parenting, see, "Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk by Timothy J. Dailey, Family Research Council, Issue No.: 238, http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS01J3.)

Florida’s law banning adoptions by homosexuals is imminently reasonable and absolutely important for the future of the children at stake in this debate. Biblical standards of morality make plain the dangers of homosexual practice for both persons engaged in such a lifestyle, as well as those who are touched by that lifestyle.

For the sake of the children, let’s pray the U.S. Supreme Court will allow the Eleventh Circuit’s decision to stand.