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For gay father, adoption ruling is `a defining moment'
After
seven years, a Key West foster dad fulfilled a 12-year-old boy's
greatest dream: to have a real father. In doing so, he may help smash a
controversial Florida law.
Video | Two dads, one loving familyBy CAROL MARBIN MILLER, cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com
Two months after the foster child came to live in Wayne LaRue Smith'stwo-story Key West home, the brown-eyed 5-year-old boy looked up from
the kitchen table and, in a plaintive voice, asked what seemed a simple
question.
``Will you be my daddy?''
At first, Smith, a foster father who has cared for 33 children in state custody, could not say yes.
Smith, who is openly gay, could raise other people's children. But
in Florida, the only state that outright bans all gay people from
adopting, he could never adopt a child of his own.
Until now.
Last month, a Monroe Circuit judge became only the second judge in
Florida history to allow a gay man or lesbian to adopt a child.
Smith's may be a pyrrhic victory. Though Circuit Judge David John
Audlin Jr.'s order will stand, it likely will hold little sway over
future cases, scholars say. Moreover, the state Attorney General's
Office will not appeal the order, meaning it will never be reviewed by
a higher court.
With another legal challenge set to begin next month in Miami -- one
that is being contested -- Audlin's order could become a historical
footnote.
To Smith and his new son, though, it has the power of a landmark decision, he said.
'I knew that in our hearts, from that moment on that, one way or
another, we were going to answer that question `yes,' Smith said.
``It's seven years later, but now we can.''
''It was a defining moment,'' Smith said of the boy's request seven
years ago. ``There are moments in life I won't ever forget. In that
instant there was nothing I wanted more than to say yes. But this crazy
state I live in won't let me.''
The Attorney General's Office, which is defending the adoption ban
in the Miami case next month, has argued in court records they are
upholding public morality and providing for the healthy development of
foster children by ensuring they are raised by dual-sex parents.
''Chief among the interests served by Florida's adoption law is the
best interest of Florida children,'' Assistant Attorney General Valerie
J. Martin has written. ``Can it be seriously contended that an arguably
rational basis does not exist for placing adoptive children in the mainstream of American family life?''
The state did not defend the ban, however, in Audlin's court.
In a strongly worded 67-page order signed Aug. 29, Audlin wrote that
Florida's 1977 gay adoption ban arose out of ''unveiled expressions of
bigotry'' when the state was experiencing a severe backlash to demands
for civil rights by gay people in Miami.
''Disqualifying every gay Floridian from raising a family, enjoying
grandchildren or carrying on the family name, based on nothing more
than lawful sexual conduct, while assuring child abusers, terrorists,
drug dealers, rapists and murderers at least individualized
consideration,'' Audlin wrote, was so ''disproportionately severe''
that it violates the state and U.S. constitutions.
Wayne LaRue Smith, 53, is an unlikely iconoclast. He grew up in
Reno, Nev., and enlisted in the Air Force while the Vietnam War still
was being fought. He was stationed in the Four Corners area of Arizona,
where he helped train bombers at a radar bomb scoring site in the
desert.
Smith earned degrees from Arizona State University and the
University of Arizona's law school, and moved to South Florida in 1988.
He met his partner, Dan Skahen, a real estate broker, at a volunteer
leadership workshop in March 1992. Smith practices commercial law.
In testimony this summer, Smith called himself ``borderline boring.''
Even before 1999, the two men discussed having a family together.
But that year, they took the first concrete steps. They enrolled in a
Department of Children & Families pre-adoption course, and began
the screening process to adopt a child from the state's foster care
system. Smith said they were aware of the ban.
''We didn't actually set out to be foster parents,'' Smith said. ``We set out to become adoptive parents.''
But during one of the training classes, Smith and Skahen were told
of the state's ''desperate'' need for foster parents. The men had an
epiphany. They could satisfy their desire to raise a family, and
provide shelter and nurturing to an abused or neglected child at the
same time.
And since the state does not restrict gay people from fostering, Smith and Skahen could become instant dads.
The two men quickly established a routine, beginning with a child's first night at the house with the white picket fence.
New children would be encouraged to swim in the family pool. Smith
and Skahen found the water was comforting to the youngsters, and the
children discovered they were safe there, they said.
''Then, we watch The Wizard of Oz,'' Smith said. ``You can
be scared of the flying monkeys, marvel at the magic of the wizard,
sigh at the happy ending. It seems to work for us. We're very
practical. If something works, we stick with it.''
The two men have fostered more than 30 children since DCF accepted
their application nine years ago, from a 2-day-old newborn to a
17-year-old.
At one point, Smith and Skahen had six foster kids in the
2,700-square-foot home. ''I don't think I sat down for six months to
eat,'' Skahen said.
''We always counted [the children],'' Skahen added. ``We had to take
two cars wherever we went, because we didn't have enough seats.''
Foster parents like Smith and Skahen, said Andrea Moore, who heads
Florida's Children First, an advocacy group, ``go straight to heaven.''
Still, however, there was something missing for the Key West couple.
The little boy who had come to their home in 2001 wanted a real
father, Smith said. Not a foster dad. Not a permanent guardian -- a
legal nicety that occurred in 2004 granting Smith the ability to make
decisions on the boy's behalf.
At the doctor's office, at the grocery store, at an airline ticket
counter, the boy seemed to visibly deflate every time a stranger asked
Smith, ''Is that your son?,'' Smith said.
Smith and Skahen were, in most respects, model foster parents, state records showed.
''The applicant is seen as nurturing, stable and devoted,'' a social
worker's home study concluded. ``As an individual, he is considered to
hold high moral character and is known to be gentle and patient.''
The 12-year-old boy's teacher testified the couple were among the
most involved and nurturing parents in her class. ''I must confess,''
she told a judge, ``the first year I had him, knowing he was of gay
parents, I looked for things, and I found nothing.''
Smith filed an adoption petition on Feb. 29. State child welfare
administrators wrote the application would have been a no-brainer, but
for that one intractable problem: ''This home study is not approvable
due to [Smith's] open disclosure of his sexual orientation, and
therefore the adoption is disallowable by law,'' it concluded.
Smith and Skahen now are raising the 12-year-old boy Smith adopted,
and a 10-year-old foster child whom they expect to remain with them
until he reaches adulthood. There also are two cats, a dog and two
hermit crabs.
The family maintains a strict routine in other areas, as well.
Children open their backpacks every afternoon when they come home so
the dads can inspect for homework. Homework is done promptly. The
family shares dinner every night, no excuses. Quiet time after dinner
and before bed. Lights out at 8:30, except on the weekend.
''We were a family going into this,'' Skahen said. ``We're just more of a solidified family now.''
Photo by CARL JUSTE / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Wayne Larue Smith and partner Daniel Skahen are the first gay
parents in the State of Florida to successfully adopt a foster child of
the age of 12. Here, the two father hug their son in his room of their
Key West home.
Posted by Steve Rothaus at 09:52 PM on September 23, 2008
AJ