(Miami, Florida) A south Florida judge has granted the adoption of a young teen by a gay Key West man, ruling that the state’s blanket ban on gay adoption is “unconstitutional.”

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.”

The law, however, does not bar gays from serving as foster parents.

The case before Monroe Circuit Court Judge David J. Audlin Jr. involved a 13-year-old boy who had been fostered by the gay Key West man since 2001, the Miami Herald reports. The names of the parties in the case are being withheld.

The teen has learning disabilities and special needs and after fostering the boy for several years, Judge Audlin appointed the foster father his legal guardian in 2006. The man then applied to adopt the boy.

In his ruling granting the adoption, Audlin noted that a home study by a social worker ”highly” recommended the man and his partner be allowed to adopt the boy. The social worker’s report said the couple provided the boy with a ”loving and nurturing home,” provided ”fair and consistent” discipline and are financially secure.

Audin’s ruling said 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,” the Herald reports Audlin wrote in his ruling.

There have been at least two similar rulings and another case will soon be heard by a judge in Miami, but it is questionable whether the rulings topple the 31-year old law.

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.