Florida's last stand?

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit on May 26 to overturn Florida's law against gay adoptions, the only such statewide ban in the nation.

"They trust gays and lesbians to be foster care parents but not adoptive parents," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU in Florida. "What we want is to remove that blanket prohibition ... so that they would be evaluated as to their fitness and suitability to be adoptive parents just like everybody else."

The lead plaintiff in the Florida suit is Steve Lofton, 41. He and his partner of 15 years have raised three foster children, ages 8 to 11, from birth. Two are HIV-positive; the third, born positive, no longer tests positive for the virus that causes AIDS. The family recently moved to Oregon.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, at least one judicial opponent of gay adoption got her comeuppance. A three-judge panel of the state court of appeals on June 1 harshly criticized Judge Susan McDunn, who tried to block three uncontested second-parent adoptions by lesbian couples by going so far as to contact a religious-right group to ask them to intervene. The panel said McDunn, who has since been moved to a desk job handling paperwork, "discredited not only the judiciary but the citizens of Illinois."