There are a lot of people who would claim not giving custody rights to a man in the divorce is not good either, especially when the father has been proven to be a better parent.

Besides, how many adults out there really try to pass a child off as their own if they're adopted.  I'm not saying they would flaunt the fact, but I would think that as long as the parents let the child know they were loved and protected, what's the harm in letting any two people in a long term committed relationship adopt a child.

Cheers

Once upon a time, the way to change a law was through the democratic process; changing minds, getting out there and getting the people inspired enough to effect their legislators. Now, though, the way to change a law is to have it ruled "unconstitutional", whether the Constitution deals with it or not.

If people endeavoring to make change this way seem like they are swimming upstream, it is because they are. They are end-running the process of governance to impose their will on the very people who approved the laws and elected the people who passed them.

So, if they want to overturn the law, they need to change the minds of the people. If Florida is ready as a state to allow gay adoption, then it would be a simple matter to change the law in the legislature. If they AREN'T, then the issue isn't really the law, is it?

Unconstitutional... to you. To the people who approve of the law it isn't. Homosexuals simply share a sexual preference. There's nothing self-apparent about homosexuals being protected any more than people who prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate. People persist in thinking that everyone agrees that homosexuals are a "group" or a "minority". They don't .

Adoption isn't a "right", in any sense of the word. No more than any other license issued by the government, like marriage or driver's licenses. There are insane numbers of hoops to jump through; economical, social, to adopt a child, and many are very, very descriminatory. The system makes no apologies; their key interest is the well-being of the child. The mentally retarded are generally not allowed to adopt, and doubly protected by civil rights laws since they are handicapped.

I can't descriminate against a handicapped person unless it effects their ability to do the job. Florida voters, though, at least in 1977, decided that homosexuals didn't meet their standards for adoption. Now YOU may not agree that homosexuality is a reason to prevent people from adopting, but unless you are a voter in Florida, it isn't your call to make.

You can rattle and cough and blow your nose, but eventually the pneumonia will kill you unless you treat the disease instead of the symptoms. Replacing one form of oppression with another isn't a solution. One group shoves an ideal down the throats of the minority, the minority does some legal manuvering and shoves their will down the throats of the majority.

What ISN'T being addressed is the concerns of the public. You can make a minority out of any group that shares a characteristic. In general, people don't have a lot of respect for people who use the courts to force social change. Instead of acclimating the public to their point-of-view, they just brandish a court order and let them steep in their hate.

You either want real change, or you want to impose your will. If homosexuals in this case are satisfied to impose their will on the majority and live with the consequences, fine. In the long run, though, allowing people to change the laws themselves is the only way to preserve Democracy and not create more angst than is already there.

When you think about it though, if it's wrong to discriminate against homosexuals because of who they are, that should hold true for all the criteria that prevents people from getting children. Without such discrimination in practice, as long as somebody's an adult and not a felon, they should be given a child at will.

And the question is a complete diversion by those who pose it here. People are disqualified from adoption for things they choose, and others are disqualified for things beyond their control. Whether homosexuality is one or the other is immaterial.

What is in question is whose belief system has pre-eminance. Sandy2 and Jesusstayscrunchy believe that homosexuality is okay and not harmful to adopted kids. The lawmakers in Florida tended to think differently in 1977. Neither opinion is based on objective fact, both are based on belief.

So, do we force the beliefs of a minority down the throats of the majority, or do we strive as other minorities have done to change the hearts and minds of people and let them make their own decision? Here, we see that rule by judge isn't kosher for Sandy and the rest. If they had overturned the law, then rule by judge would have been fine. In essence, if the judge interperates the constitution according to Sandy's beliefs, she's all for it.

The sad part in this case is we don't even have the opinion of the majority. This wasn't an attempt at referrendum, it was an end-run around a law made almost 30 years ago. Don't the people even have the right to be asked?

Don't fool yourselves. Our society isn't based on self-evident truths. It is based on those truths WE FIND TO BE self-evident. Our opinion, our beliefs of what is true. Over the centuries we have changed our collective mind about a lot of stuff, and our interpretation of the constitution has changed along with it. Until the will of the people changed to a substantial degree, though, change was impossible.

These activists should be making people understand their beliefs about homosexuality, then there'd be no problem with laws like this. Instead, they assume that the masses are less socially evolved and try to force social change on them by relying on the power of individual judges, most of which weren't even elected.