They just continue to show us up. Having just ruled that marriages performed in Mexico City be recognized throughout the nation, the Supreme Court upheld, by a vote of 9-2, that gay couples are also entitled to adoption rights in that city.

It’s so encouraging, watching the rest of the world pass us by.

They’re really batting a thousand down there. A third judge has ruled in favor of adoption rights for gay couples, calling Florida’s adoption ban unconstitutional:

“There is no rational connection between sexual orientation and what is or is not in the best interest of a child,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia. She also called the anti-gay adoption law “unconstitutional on its face,” and that it could not be enforced.

“The permanent interests and benefit to all members of the adoptive household will be promoted by the adoption,” Sampedro-Iglesia wrote. Alenier “is a fit and proper person to adopt the child and has adequate resources and facilities to care for the child.”

Judge Sampedro-Iglesia’ ruling comes after a judge in Key West, Monroe Circuit Judge David J. Audlin, declared the law unconstitutional, after Audlin’ allowed a gay Key West lawyer, Wayne LaRue Smith, to adopt a boy he had been raising in foster care and Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman approved the adoption of two half brothers by a gay North Miami foster parent, Frank Martin Gill, after she too said the law was unconstitutional.

When judges all over the state are calling a law unconstitutional, it probably is! Just a thought. Also, it becomes hard to throw accusations of “judishul activizm” when judge after judge after judge declares a law unconstitutional.

Still throwing those accusations, though, is Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver.* It’s so sad when Christian Right attorneys try to “do law”:

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, called Sampedro-Iglesia’ ruling “evidence of judicial activism’ that violates state law.

“A judge is not a legislature onto oneself,” Staver said. “Judges don’t have the ability to write laws any way they desire. They have to follow the rule of law, and this judge did not.”

That’s right, Matthew! Judges are not legislatures! Judges are charged with interpreting the law in light of, in this case, the Florida Constitution, though, which is where things get confusing, so I’ll go slow for you! If judges’ jobs were simply to “follow the rule of law,” regardless of what the Constitution said, then their branch of government wouldn’t really be very important, now would it? But, you see, Matthew, the judicial system** is set up to act as a check on the legislature, so that if the people’s representatives pass unconstitutional laws, like the anti-gay adoption ban, then, in theory, the judges are charged with striking those laws down.

Civics is so confusing, I KNOW!

*SERIOUSLY, where is Lisa Miller?!

**Do they teach the “judicial system” at Liberty???

Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas expressed frustration yesterday with the anti-family Liberty Counsel, a religious-right organization that assists allies such as Exodus International in filing frivolous lawsuits and legal threats against families and pro-equality advocates.

The LC’s latest effort to harm children begins like many similar stories: With foster children whom religious rightist couples decline to adopt.

The story began during the 2004 Christmas season, when state social workers brought two brothers to foster parent Frank Gill. They picked him because of his experience and success in dealing with the hard-luck cases.

The boys certainly were that.

John, 4, wore filthy clothes, suffered from a severe case of ringworm and was all but comatose, responding only to his 4-month-old brother, James. He had become James’ main caregiver, feeding him and changing his diaper as his parents huffed their drugs.

John shunned affection. He grunted instead of talked. He hoarded food because in the world he came from, it was not a commodity to take for granted.

James was so young, he healed quickly. But it took Gill and his partner, Tom Roe, two years of relentless compassion to reach John. And now both brothers are thriving. They have friends, a school, a safe neighborhood, loving parents and, most of all, structure.

Gill saved their lives.

Everyone who knows the boys, including a state-appointed guardian and a child therapist, say this house is where they belong.

A circuit-court judge agreed, granting Gill permission to adopt the boys. This prompted an appeal from the Attorney General’s Office, charged with defending an archaic state law that bans gay adoptions in Florida.

The Family Law Section of the Florida Bar Association then decided to get involved. Its executive committee voted unanimously to file a brief in support of the two boys, and then won the unanimous approval of the Bar Association’s Board of Governors to do so.

But the Liberty Counsel and Christian Coalition see things differently. No two-parent heterosexual household has Gill’s qualifications or experience, nor the willingness to take on the challenge. So the two organizations want the children placed in orphanages or with a string of reluctant and unqualified (but heterosexual and evangelical) strangers instead. Thomas observes:

Can you imagine the effort Gill put into rescuing John? Can you imagine the baggage that boy arrived with and the love and patience required to overcome it? You think your kid is a handful? Imagine a boy who knew only the kind of abuse we couldn’t even imagine the first four years of his life.

And the Liberty Counsel reduces this to giving him a pair of pants, filling his cereal bowl and taking him to tennis lessons. I would like to see one member of the Liberty Counsel who has exhibited anything close to this level of Christian compassion exhibited by Frank Gill.

Instead, the Counsel sits back in judgment, painting blindly with its broad brush, oblivious to the fate of these two boys if they ever were yanked from the only family they’ve ever known.

Focus on the Family believes that — given a choice between having gay parents or remaining orphans, due to the unwillingness of Christian couples to adopt older kids — youths should be left in orphanages.

Focus declared Feb. 11 that California children are “best served” by ensuring that state governments favor adoption by unavailable “Christian” heterosexual parents and prevent adoption by available gay parents.

Focus does encourage Christian parents to adopt — not so much for love and family, but to make sure that stable and strong gay couples have no one left to adopt:

“One of the good things that can come out of a controversy like this is that Christians in the community can rise up and say, “We will be the families for these waiting kids,’ ” [Focus' Kelly Rosati] said.

These are times when well-qualified, mature, responsible, discreet, and loving gay and single parents are available to adopt orphaned Arkansas youths.

These are also, sadly, times when heterosexual Christian couples across America generally refuse to adopt youths from troubled backgrounds.

In these times, Focus on the Family today cheered Arkansas for condemning youths to live in orphanages or a broken foster-care system (at taxpayer expense, and subject to abuse and neglect by bureaucrats) — all so that capable single and gay couples may be denied the opportunity and privilege of raising these youths responsibly and removing them from the government dole.

Focus’ hatred of gay couples and unmarried adults greatly exceeds its concern for child welfare and its supposed commitment to small government.