Kenneth Connor, a former Florida attorney who now heads the conservative and staunchly anti-gay Family Research Council in Washington, said Florida's law accepts the premise that children are "best off" in a home with both a mother and father.
The problem is, you know, that it doesn't. If that were true, then heterosexual single people wouldn't be allowed to adopt in Florida, but it seems that they are. The law simply singles us out.
That said, since Florida is one of the states with a broad-based sodomy law, their perfectly legitimate legal defense is that they don't want to place children in a house with people known to engage in criminal conduct. I'm not talking about how reasonable the law is, mind; I'm just saying that given that the law exists, Florida has a defense that a federal court would accept, should they choose to use it. (Florida's sodomy law is so broad as to be almost meaningless; "unnatural act" is never defined, and "lascivious act" is defined almost purely as indecent exposure, but somehow, this covers homosexual conduct between men and between women, as well as heterosexual oral and anal sex.)
ASIDE: heterosexual adultery and cohabitation are both against the law in Florida, as well, but somehow, I don't imagine that it gets prosecuted very often. As a misdemeanor of the second degree, adulterers and cohabitators should receive a $500 fine and a 60-day jail sentence. I'd like to see them enforce that act, I really would.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
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12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
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12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
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