A controversial adoption bill will offer Gov. Rick Scott potential political problems when it lands on his desk in the not-too-distant future.
“A very good adoption bill that got complicated by a social issue,” is how Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala and former executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, described the measure (HB 7013).
But because the social issue is gay adoption, Baxley and other social conservatives believe Scott should veto the bill —although reluctantly, because the measure also would provide $5,000 payments to government workers who adopt foster children, with the payments increasing to $10,000 for adopting children with special needs.
The legislation didn’t start out as a complicated choice. In fact, the idea of giving subsidies to government workers who adopt children in the state foster-care system was part of the “Work Plan 2015,” jointly endorsed by Senate President Andy Gardiner and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli in January. Moreover, the legislation was first filed by Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican and former Senate president, at roughly the same time.
But on March 11, when the House approved the subsidies, it also voted to repeal a 38-year-old law that banned gay adoption — setting off a firestorm among social conservatives like Stemberger and Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, who called the provision a “poison pill.”
For practical purposes, the gay-adoption ban ended in 2010, when an appeals court ruled against it. Rep. David Richardson, a Miami Beach Democrat who is gay, said the House amendment was “simply a repeal of an outdated statute.”
But the backlash was so fiery that within weeks, the House had passed another measure (HB 7111) affording what it called “conscience protection” to private adoption agencies whose religious or moral convictions prevent them from placing children with gay parents. That bill, which died in the Senate, would have protected the agencies from losing their licenses or state funding if they refused to facilitate adoptions on religious or moral grounds.