MEDIA ADVISORY FOR
August 26, 2009
Contact: Brandon Hensler, (786) 363-2737, media@aclufl.org; or Paul Cates, (212) 549-2568, Cell, (917) 566-1294
What: Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in an ACLU lawsuit challenging Florida’s law banning lesbians and gay men from adopting.
Who: Martin Gill, a gay man from North Miami who has been granted adoptions of two foster children he has been raising for nearly five years; his lawyers, Leslie Cooper, a Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, and Robert Rosenwald, Director of the LGBT Project of the ACLU of Florida.
Where: FIU College of Law, University Park Campus
Rafael Diaz-Balart Hall, Room 1000
11200 SW 8th St.
Miami, FL 33199
When: August 26, 2009 at 9:30 AM
Following the argument, Martin Gill and his lawyers will be on hand to answer questions.
Why: Florida has the broadest anti-gay parenting law in the nation, banning all lesbians and gay men from adopting. This law flies in the face of the recommendations of all the children’s health and welfare organizations, who recognize that gay people make equally good parents, because it reduces the limited pool of potential parents willing to provide permanent homes to children in need. All potential adoptive families are already thoroughly screened before being allowed to adopt.
During discovery for the trial, DCF admitted that the shortage of adoptive parents is a serious problem. At any given time there are approximately 900 to 1000 children who need adoptive parents to be recruited to adopt them. Every year, many children age out of the system without ever being adopted.
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