Despite opposition from Uruguay’s Roman Catholic Church and some of the political opposition, the 99-seat Chamber or Representatives on Thursday passed the bill 40-13, with the remaining members absent.

It goes next to the Senate, which approved an earlier version of the bill in July but must now vote again on modifications.

If it becomes law, Uruguay would be the first country in Latin American to allow adoption by gay and lesbian couples.

The law supported by socialist President Tabare Vazquez’s Broad Front coalition, which has already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the armed forces.

The state is appealing a Miami-Dade County judge’s November 2008 ruling that the law is unconstitutional. The ruling came in the case of Martin Gill, who along with his partner has adopted two young boys. The appeals court is hearing arguments Wednesday in Miami.

State attorneys say the judge essentially legislated from the bench and that state lawmakers should decide the matter. Attorneys for Gill and the two boys say the judge was expected to review the facts in detail before making her decision.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Gill, calls Florida’s gay adoption ban the broadest such law in the nation.

“I must say I was very pleased there was no allowance in this bill for homosexual couples to adopt a child,” she said.

Pratt, an MP for the Nanango district of Queensland, expressed her opposition to gay adoption and said that she believes a child should be raised by one mother and one father so it can have “a balanced view.”

“I feel very strongly about that particular thought that . . . I’m not saying they aren’t loving people, I’m not saying they wouldn’t be fabulous parents, but I am saying that in my opinion a child deserves a mother and a father if possible and that whether you regard homosexual activity as a normal part of life or not, I don’t,” she said.

Other Queensland parliament MPs, such as Christine Smith, spoke out in support for same-sex adoption.

“I acknowledge people have very strong and opposing views on the sensitive issue of same sex adoption,” said Smith. “I believe that same sex couples should be assessed by the same standards as any other couple on their suitability to adopt.”

Prior to the controversy surrounding Pratt, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced last week that he would not do away with the country’s anti-gay marriage laws.

“Due to recent events, I have decided to focus my full attention on my family and resign my Senate seat effective August 10,” Republican Sen. Paul Stanley wrote in his resignation letter.

Court records show that Stanley, 47, told agents investigating a blackmail case that he had a sexual relationship with intern McKensie Morrison. Her boyfriend, Joel Watts, is charged with trying to extort $10,000 from Stanley in April. Investigators say Watts demanded the money in exchange for not releasing to the media explicit photos of Morrison that Stanley had taken in what appears to be Stanley’s apartment.

The senator, a married father of two who represents suburban Memphis, had signaled he would remain in the legislature, but he said Tuesday that he decided to step down about an hour before submitting his resignation letter. Stanley, who was elected to the Senate in 2006 after serving six years in the state House, had resigned last week as chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee.

A special election will be held to fill the seat in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Stanley’s legislative proposals were largely focused on pro-business issues, but he also sponsored failed measures to ban gay couples from adopting children. He also spoke out against funding for Planned Parenthood because he said unmarried people should not have sex.

“Whatever I stood for and advocated, I still believe to be true,” he said during an interview Tuesday with Memphis radio station WREC-AM. “And just because I fell far short of what God’s standard was for me and my wife, doesn’t mean that that standard is reduced in the least bit.”

Morrison’s phone numbers are redacted from her legislative internship application, and efforts to reach her were unsuccessful Tuesday. Her father said he didn’t want to talk about the situation.

“It’s a family matter, and I’m going to approach it that way,” Will Morrison said.

According to court records, Morrison is married to a man who is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Florida but that he has filed for divorce.

Watts said in an interview with a Nashville TV station last week that he blamed Stanley for taking advantage of Morrison

When questioned whether he would support changes to the law, Gov. Crist told reporters, “I’d have to think about it.”

Three hours later, however, Gov. Crist reaffirmed his support for “traditional families” only to adopt while speaking at an event in Jacksonville as a part of his statewide tour for “Explore Adoption Day.”

In 1977, Florida passed a law that made it the only state in the country to ban gay adaption. The American Civil Liberties Union is currently suing to have the law overturned. ACLU and other groups believe that preventing gay adoption prevents some children from being adopted.

“Excluding a class of people is harmful to children, particularly those in our state who have had gay foster parents,” ACLU spokesman Larry Spalding told The Associated Press.

Read the full Jacksonville.com story here.

Judge Cindy Lederman has been removed from her 15-year post as top administrative judge over Miami-Dade’s juvenile courts. The new chief justice over Miami courts says he wanted new perspectives and leadership.

Lederman ruled in November 2008 that Florida’s gay adoption ban was unconstitutional, a case now on appeal. She also oversaw numerous juvenile justice programs in Miami and publicly scolded state officials in 2002 following the disappearance of 5-year-old foster child Rilya Wilson.

The new top judge in Miami’s juvenile courts is Orlando Prescott. Lederman will remain a juvenile court judge and says she respects the decision.

Liberty Counsel, a faith-based legal group, had asked the high court to prohibit the bar’s Family Law Section from filing a friend of the court brief in an appellate court that was considering Florida’s ban of adoptions by homosexuals. The justices ruled 5-2 in the case on Thursday.

The bar brief supported a trial judge’s ruling that declared the ban unconstitutional. That decision is on appeal to the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami.

The high court majority ruled Liberty Counsel failed to show the brief violated its constitutional rights or that the bar broke its own rules.

Seeger adapted “Turn, Turn, Turn (to Everything There is a Season)” from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

It was the right song for the mid-1960s, for those days leading up to the Summer of Love.

And it is the right song for now:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

We turned through a fall of frustration, a November in which we lost to the religious right on ballot initiatives in Florida, Arkansas, Arizona and California.

A time to lose.

A time to mourn.

We turned through a winter of weariness as we learned of the purchasing power of hate, of the wealth that religious organizations pumped into those anti-gay ballot initiatives, and as we learned of a Bush administration that declined to join in a United Nations declaration of human rights for GLBT people.

A time of hate.

A time to heal.

And we turned through a spring of celebration as we secured victories in state after state and in the U.S. Capitol.

A time to gain.

A time to love.

A time for the Iowa Supreme Court to clear the way for same-sex couples to marry.

A time for lawmakers in Maine, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire to vote for same-sex marriage — not partnership benefits, not civil unions but marriage.

A time for Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell to sign a same-sex marriage bill into law.

A time for Maine Gov. John Baldacci to sign a same-sex marriage bill into law.

A time for the Vermont Legislature to override a governor’s veto and enact its same-sex marriage bill into law.

A time for the D.C. Council to vote to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions.

A time for New York Gov. David Paterson to introduce equal marriage legislation stating, “Rights should not be stifled by fears. What we should understand is silence should not be a response to injustice.”

A time for Colorado to pass legislation recognizing same-sex partnerships.

A time for Maryland lawmakers to approve domestic partner benefits for state employees.

A time for Washington state to expand its partnership benefits and add gender identity to its hate crimes act.

A time for the U.S. House to pass — and send to the U.S. Senate — an inclusive hate crimes bill.

A time for the Obama administration to support the UN declaration affirming human rights for gays.

A time, despite big boasts from the right, for lawmakers to kill an anti-gay adoption bill in Kentucky.

A time for 300 members of the clergy to lobby Congress for the passage of hate crimes, employment non-discrimination and safe-schools legislation and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

What a long strange trip it’s been since June 1969 — 40 years ago, when the modern GLBT civil rights movement gained national attention with the demonstrations at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, N.Y.

Turn, turn, turn.

And we now turn into summer.

A summer of what?

A summer that should bring gayety to our Pride parades like never before, a summer that should bring a time to dance, a time to plant, a time to cast away stones before we turn into the fall and a time to build up and gather stones together.

The House Health and Welfare Committee has voted 12-3 to send the bill to the full House for a vote.  Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) supports the bill.

The measure grew out of a federal lawsuit brought by a gay couple who want their names on the birth certificate of their adopted son.

Oren Adar and Mickey Smith adopted their Louisiana-born son in 2006 in a New York court, where a judge issued an adoption decree. 

When Smith attempted to get a new birth certificate for their child so he could add his son to his health insurance, the office of Louisiana State Registrar Darlene Smith told him that Louisiana does not recognize adoption by unmarried parents and so could not issue it.

Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of Adar and Smith in October 2007, saying that the registrar was violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution by refusing to recognize the New York adoption. The Constitution holds that judgments and orders issued by a court in one state are legally binding in other states as well. 

In December, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey in New Orleans ordered the state Office of Vital Records to put the names of both fathers on the amended birth certificate.

In his ruling, Zainey said failing to amend the birth certificate violated the U.S. Constitution. Zainey issued the ruling without holding a trial.

In April, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a stay on the ruling to allow the state to appeal.

The 5th Circuit ordered legal briefs to be submitted in the case and the Appeals Court is expected to hear the case later this year.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said that the case brings up complex constitutional questions and is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has ruled previously that there “are some limitations upon the extent to which a state may be required by the full faith and credit clause to enforce even the judgment of another state in contravention of its own statutes or policy.”

Florida law allows gays to serve as foster parents but not adopt. The law is considered the most repressive of its kind in the country.  But a Miami judge ruled in November that there is “no rational basis” for prohibiting gays from adopting children. 

The Florida Department of Children & Families and the state attorney general’s office , backed by Gov. Charlie Crist (R), appealed the gay-friendly ruling to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami. 

In January, the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors voted to allow its Family Law Section to file “a friend of the court” brief in support of the gay-friendly lower court ruling. But a conservative group of attorneys challenged the right of the board to intervene in the case. The lawyers are represented by Liberty Counsel, which regularly fights LGBT issues across the country.

The Bar Association, on the other hand, argues that the board should be allowed to present its arguments, saying that the board is a voluntary section of the Bar and does not necessarily represent the full membership of the Association.

The  issue of whether the ban on gay adoptions is constitutional will likely ultimately end up before the Supreme Court as well.

Until then, the lower court ruling permitting gay adoption will apply only to the case that was before it at the time, which  involved Martin Gill of Miami who sought to adopt two young brothers he had cared for as foster children since 2004. 

The boys had been placed with Gill temporarily after he was approached for help by a state child abuse investigator. When the three became attached, so Gill sought to adopt the boys.

In November, 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 to 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 had the support of Gov. Charlie Crist (R) who said he has no plans to have the law repealed.

The Florida legislature adopted the law banning gay adoption 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 Florida legislature.