Gay adoption request sidelined for now: Family Law Section hopes to drum up greater support.

Faced with the prospect it would be rejected as deeply divisive among Florida Bar members, two Bar sections have postponed their request for permission to lobby for the repeal of the state law that bans adoption by gays.

The issue did not reach the full Board of Governors at its August 13 meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach. Rather, representatives of the Public Interest Law Section and the Family Law Section agreed to the suggestion of Legislation Committee members to delay their request until the board's December meeting. That will give the sections time to demonstrate their claim that the issue is not potentially divisive among Bar members.

That is a key issue because Bar policies--following rulings of the Florida Supreme Court--give sections wide latitude on issues on which they may lobby. But the policies prohibit them from acting on matters not within their purviews, that contravene Bar positions, or on issues that would likely produce deep, philosophical or emotional division among Bar members.

The Public Interest Law Section sought a similar lobbying position in 1991, but it was rejected as it failed to meet the divisiveness test.

Both sections also want to advocate for the creation of a "best interests" standard to determine who may adopt.

Bar President Kelly Overstreet Johnson, President-elect Alan Bookman, and board member Harold Melville told the Legislation Committee they had informally polled lawyers in their circuits (the Second, First, and 19th, respectively) and found them split on the issue.

Johnson said the lawyers she quizzed responded, "'I don't have a problem, but 1 think it's divisive.' If you came to the board and you had [most of] the sections supporting you, that would be persuasive....

"I personally am in favor of the position you want to lobby for, but that's not the test," she added.

Indeed, several committee members said the case presented by Family Law Section Chair Evan Marks, immediate past Chair Richard West, and Deborah Schroth, Legislation Committee chair of the Public Interest Law Section, was persuasive, but they had problems with the divisiveness issue. No one expressed a philosophical objection to the requested position.

"It's about half and half in my community," Melville said, "and the views are very strongly held. It's a lack of education."

He noted that the Family Law Section Executive Council had rejected the position earlier this year, before approving it unanimously during the Bar's June Annual...