Tallahasse, Fla. – House Bill 7013, titled “Adoption and Foster Care” bill, will go before the Florida Senate April 8. If the bill passes, it will finally remove the language of the state’s unconstitutional, obsolete ban on gay adoption.
Florida’s House of Representatives voted 68-50 to approve the bill March 11.
The move to scrub the gay adoption ban language is part of a larger adoption bill that provides adoption benefits to state employees and incentive payments to community-based care groups. Of the 20 pages of bill language, just a single line applies to deleting the ban on adoption by gays and is mostly just symbolic since Florida’s adoption ban was ruled unconstitutional back in 2010 and hasn’t been enforced since
The law was first passed by the Florida Legislature in 1977 after the anti-gay “Save Our Children” campaign by Anita Bryant. A circuit appeals court upheld the ban in 2004, but a state appeals court struck it down in 2010 and gay people in Florida have been successfully adopting since then.
If signed by Governor Rick Scott, then the bill is expected to become law on July 1.
This is one of two adoption-related bills up for a vote April 8 – an anti-gay adoption bill has been added to the agenda for the Florida House’s session agenda.
The bill, if passed, would allow privately owned adoption agencies, regardless if they are receiving state funds or not, to deny placing a child with a family or couple if it conflicts with their religious or moral convictions.
This would allow agencies to deny LGBT couples from adopting solely based on the fact they are gay.
