(Miami, Florida) A Miami judge Tuesday ruled there is “no rational basis” for prohibiting gays from adopting children. It is the second time in two months a judge has ruled against the Florida ban.

Tuesday’s ruling will allow 47-year-old Martin Gill to adopt two young brothers he has cared for as foster children since 2004.

The boys had been placed with Gill after he was approached for help by a state child abuse investigator.

The placement was supposed to be temporary, but three years later, the boys and Gill have become a family, and now they want to ensure the children will not be removed at some point from his care.

Gill and lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union in October asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman to overturn the ban on gay adoption and award him permanent custody.

An attorney appointed by Lederman to represent the children said in a report to the court that the children refer Gill and his partner as “dad” and that Gill should be granted the adoption.

The Florida Department of Children & Families and the state attorney general’s office argued the ban should be maintained. The position has the support of Gov. Charlie Crist (R) who said he has no plans to have the law repealed.

“They’re a good family,” Lederman said in her ruling. “They’re a family in every way except in the eyes of the law. These children have a right to permanancy.”

“The only real permanancy is adoption in the home where they are thriving,” she said. “There is no rational basis to preclude homosexuals from adopting.”

Attorneys for the state said they would appeal Lederman’s ruling. The case is expected to wind up in the Florida Supreme Court.

LGBT rights groups said they believe the court will uphold Lederman’s ruling if the court takes the case.

“We at the Family Equality Council fully trust that the Florida State Supreme Court, should it hear this case on appeal, will see that the state has no compelling reason to overturn today’s ruling, which evaluated the relationship between Frank Martin Gill and his two sons and, correctly, said, ‘Yes, this is a family,’” said Jennifer Chrisler, the council’s executive director.

In September, another South Florida judge ruled against the law in a separate case.

That case involved a 13-year-old boy who had been fostered by a gay Key West man since 2001. Monroe Circuit Court Judge David J. Audlin Jr. said in his ruling that the gay adoption ban violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by preventing family court and child welfare judges from deciding case-by-case what is best for a child.

”Contrary to every child welfare principle the gay adoption ban operates as a conclusive or irrebuttable presumption that . . . it is never in the best interest of any adoptee to be adopted by a homosexual,” he wrote.

The Florida legislature adopted the law during Anita Bryant’s infamous anti-gay crusade in 1977. The bill’s sponsor in the state Senate told a local newspaper at the time that the law was intended to send this message to lesbians and gay men: “[We] are really tired of you. We wish you’d go back in the closet.”

In 2004, a federal appeals court upheld Florida’s ban on gay adoption. In a written ruling, the court rejected a challenge by four gay men to the law.

“We exercise great caution when asked to take sides in an ongoing public policy debate, such as the current one over the compatibility of homosexual conduct with the duties of adoptive parenthood,” wrote Judge Stanley Birch.

“The state of Florida has made the determination that it is not in the best interests of its displaced children to be adopted by individuals who ‘engage in current, voluntary homosexual activity’ and we have found nothing in the Constitution that forbids this policy judgment.”

The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.

Attempts to repeal the law have failed several times in the legislature.