It was hot at The Shore Club in Miami Beach Jan. 9. Despite the record-breaking cold temperature outside, Cynthia Nixon, the sexy red-headed star of Sex and the City, was heating up the media room with her dazzling smile and effusive charm. Nixon and her cohorts on Sex and the City are well-known for their obsessions with all things sex in their city, the Big Apple. But the Emmy, Tony, and Grammy award-winning, openly lesbian actress was not in Miami to promote the highly-anticipated new Sex and the City movie. She had flown into wintry Florida to lend her star power to the kickoff event of the ACLU’s campaign to end Florida’s abominable gay adoption ban.
My partner and I drove to Miami from Orlando to interview this passionate activist for an upcoming project.
Florida is the only state in the nation with an explicit statutory ban that prohibits its gay and lesbian citizens from adopting children. The adoption ban originated more than 30 years ago, thanks to the hysterical scare-mongering of another celebrity red head, Anita Bryant, former beauty queen and orange juice spokesperson turned anti-gay activist.
Bryant kicked off her anti-gay campaign in Miami as well, propelled by her own twisted obsession with sex, exhorting Florida’s citizens to “save our children” from the clutches of predatory “homosexuals.” Because of the ignorance of Florida’s citizens 33 years ago, and the stereotyped misinformation zealously fed to them by Bryant and her cohorts, the campaign was successful and her legacy plagues us to this day.
On Jan. 9, standing in the same city where Bryant ignited her vicious crusade, our red-headed hero declared that “now is the time to end this ban.” Nixon came to Miami to ignite a new campaign to change the hearts and minds of Florida’s citizens about gay parenting, offering her own beautiful family as an example. Nixon and her partner are engaged and are jointly raising Nixon’s two biological children.
Nixon, a fierce activist in the fight for marriage equality, told us, “Our right to marry is extremely important, but I feel that our ability to create families is perhaps even more important.” She cited that every major medical, psychological, and child welfare organization in the nation opposes Florida’s ban, noting their overwhelming consensus that children raised by gay parents are just as well adjusted psychologically, socially and academically as children raised by heterosexual parents.
On a very poignant and personal note, Nixon commented, “I think specifically of the gay men and lesbians that I know that have formed their families through adoption, and then I think, ‘In Florida those families never would have come to be.’ And it just makes me know that in Florida, if that law didn’t exist, these children would not be in limbo in foster care.
Nixon was joined at the ACLU event by Martin Gill, the Miami gay man represented by the ACLU who is the plaintiff in the pending lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ban. Four years ago he and his partner took in two very troubled young boys as foster parents at the request of Florida’s DCF, miraculously healed their minds and bodies, and in the process created a happy and loving family.
Gill wanted to adopt the boys but was denied because of the ban, and now has been forced to take on a monumental legal fight to save his family from being ripped apart. In November 2008, a Miami trial court ruled in Gill’s favor, and the case is currently on appeal. But even if the courts ultimately throw out the statutory ban, we know that the same folks who brought us Amendment 2 are standing in the wings ready to initiate a statewide ballot to reinstate the ban.
That’s why the ACLU and other civil rights organizations are implementing this campaign now to educate the public and advocate on our behalf. But they can’t do it alone. They need high profile celebrities like Nixon to speak out, they need fair-minded public leaders to speak out, and they especially need all of us to speak out. It’s our families that are at stake.
In 1977, Anita Bryant believed that the people of Florida could be scared into mindless submission by obsessing about the notion of gay sex, and she was right. She succeeded in implementing a law that has hurt Florida’s gay citizens, and more importantly, has hurt Florida’s parentless children—literally destroying any prospect of the thousands of happy homes that could have been. On Jan. 9, Nixon came to Miami and stepped into that spotlight because she believes that the people of Florida are ready to reject this ugly legacy from our past, and that new happy families can be a reality in Florida’s future.
Please join Gill, who will be in Orlando on Jan. 22 and 23, and learn how you can help repeal this horrendous ban.
