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Carlton — Gay marriage in Florida: History will judge

 
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she has sworn to uphold the state Constitution, which includes the gay marriage ban that was passed by voters.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she has sworn to uphold the state Constitution, which includes the gay marriage ban that was passed by voters.
Published Sept. 24, 2014

Four years ago, Florida's third-of-a-century-long ban on gay adoption finally fell. And remarkably, the family unit as we know it has not crumbled. Life has continued. For some kids, it surely got even better.

By now, it seems crazy in retrospect: Until an appeals court overturned the ban in 2010 and public officials declined to fight the ruling, two qualified adults who wanted to make a family were denied by a law that no longer stood in any other state in America.

History is instructive, so there's something to learn from this in Florida's current fight over the state's ban on gay marriage, another one sure to fall in time.

Marrying whom you want even when you share a gender is legal in 19 states and Washington, D.C., if you're counting. And polls have indicated even voters of the Sunshine State might be amenable by now.

At the center of the current Florida storm is Attorney General Pam Bondi, once a Tampa prosecutor and, it is not an exaggeration, a beloved hometown daughter before she made the big time.

Bondi, who has filed appeals to uphold the gay marriage ban and who wants Florida cases to remain on hold until a definitive U.S. Supreme Court ruling, said recently (and apparently in her own defense) that she has "many, many gay friends." You have to wonder if it's as many as before, given the language in one brief that says changing existing law would cause "significant public harm" and suggesting it takes a man and a woman to make a stable family.

Interestingly, Bondi also said recently she is not against gay couples being allowed to adopt, that big step Florida took four years back.

So, just to be clear: Does that make her okay with same-sex couples legally adopting children even as she fights their right to become married parents to those selfsame children?

Bondi has said she is sworn to uphold the state Constitution and the marriage ban that was passed by voters, that it is her job — though other attorneys general have declined to defend same-sex marriage bans, particularly when they appear to be doomed, against the will of the people or just wrong. When her name comes up around town, you often hear that the person behind this stance is not who they knew, Tampa's own version of Jenny-from-the-block.

Still, it's a position that bolsters her nicely with her conservative base as she runs for re-election — which she will likely win, barring a YouTube-worthy misstep in the debate against George Sheldon, former head of the Department of Children and Families who also worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And who, for the record, says he believes children need loving parents, gay ones included, and that he would drop those gay marriage appeals, were he AG.

Years from now this will probably all seem so old school, the way we fretted about how other people live their lives and whether we get to decide what constitutes a marriage and a family. It may take a little longer, this being Florida.

There's this saying we've been using a lot lately, useful when the world is moving forward, despite those who would hold it back.

It's that thing about people who will surely find themselves on the wrong side of history, who sidestepped a chance to make the right call and who will be remembered for it well beyond the next election.