This morning, an appeals court in Miami declared Florida's three-decade old ban on gays adopting children unconstitutional in a unanimous decision. The law -- which we at Riptide like to call the Rentboy Memorial Statute -- is headed to the state's Supreme Court for an appeal.

In fact, the judges reserved particular scorn for the state's contention that "experts" like George Rekers -- the anti-gay "researcher" New Times caught coming back from Europe with a Rentboy earlier this year -- had shown that gay couples are unfit as parents.



"Given a total ban on adoption by homosexual persons, one might expect that this reflected a legislative judgment that homosexual persons are, as a group, unfit to be parents," the court wrote. "No one in this case has made, or even hinted at, any such argument."

The case centered on a North Miami man named Frank Martin Gill, who, along with his partner, adopted two children in 2009 after caring for them as a foster parent for seven years.

The ACLU hailed the case as a milestone win. ``This is good news for the advancement of human rights and the children in Florida's troubled foster-care system," Howard Simon, head of the ACLU in

Florida, tells the Herald.

The three Miami judges who heard Gill's case -- Gerald B. Cope Jr., Frank A. Shepherd and Vance E. Salter -- voted 3-0 against the law.

Read the full decision here:

gayadoption.pdf