It shouldn’t be news, actually. Foster kids get adopted all the time. Not as often as we’d all like, certainly, but it does happen. So why would anyone care that Martin Gill adopted his two foster children? Gill was the boys’ foster parent for 6 years before the adoption became final on Wednesday. But it’s not so much the adoption itself that’s noteworthy but the route Gill took to get there. You see, Martin Gill is gay and, until recently, Florida was the only state in the nation with a law on the books that barred homosexuals from adopting. That is no longer the case, thanks to Gill and the ACLU.
Gill sued the state, saying the adoption ban was unconstitutional. Last year, the 3rd District Court of Appeal concurred and opened the door for Gill and other members of the LGBT community in Florida to adopt. This corrects an injustice dating back more than 30 years, to 1977 when the ban was first enacted. Gill says he is thrilled that he, his partner, and their boys are now “officially a family in the eyes of the law.”
The thing is, for every definition of the word except the legal one, they already were a family. Anyone who would fight for his kids for six long years against an entire state bureaucracy and three decades of discrimination is very much a parent and, in all likelihood, a damn good one.
And it’s not just his own kids that can now be considered a family by the state but many other similar families out there — families at heart but not on paper. Now they can have their paper, and all the rights that go with it, as well.
Tags: aclu, adoption, ban, florida, gay, glbt, lawsuit, lesbian, lgbt
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