Gay advocates praise Crist position paper on gay rights

TAMPA In a new Senate campaign position paper, Gov. Charlie Crist backs a broad swath of gay rights, including one major change in his past stance - he favors allowing adoption by same-sex couples.

Same-sex adoption currently is the subject of a high-profile court case seeking to overturn Florida's ban.

Crist also backs ending the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military; and civil unions with full legal protections, including access to government and employer health insurance programs, for same-sex couples.

Crist, a no-party candidate, didn't change his opposition to gay marriage, however.

He has opposed a U.S. constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, but says states should be able to decide the issue. He supported the successful 2008 Florida constitutional amendment campaign banning gay marriage.

A spokeswoman for one prominent Florida gay rights group praised Crist's position paper. "This is the furthest a sitting Florida governor has ever gone in publicly supporting [gay rights] issues," said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida.

But his Democratic opponent, Kendrick Meek, a longstanding advocate of gay rights including equal rights for marriage, called it "too little, too late."

His Republican opponent, Marco Rubio, along with the state Democratic Party immediately noted the contradiction to Crist's emphatic opposition to same-sex adoption in his 2006 campaign for governor.

Crist, then a Republican, backed the ban in a Christian Coalition questionnaire. He sent out mailers calling his Democratic opponent, former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, "opposed to traditional families" because Davis opposed the ban.

The position paper appears to be another move by Crist to make himself palatable to Democratic and moderate voters, at the expense of conservative Republicans he has courted in the past.

"The standard analysis of this race is that he's not going to get any conservative Republican votes anyway," said University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett.

That could help Crist pull Democrats and independents away from Meek, Jewett said.

But, Jewett added, "It frequently looks as if he's taking positions for political calculation rather than because he thinks it's good policy. Even moderates often want somebody to have a consistent set of beliefs."

In the paper, Crist says:

• "I support the current efforts by Congress and military leadership to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell and hold every member of the military to the same standard of professionalism that has made our military the greatest force for good in the world."

Crist campaign spokesman Danny Kanner said Crist takes the same stance as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, who has called for repealing the don't ask, don't tell policy and allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

• He favors the proposed "Every Child Deserves a Family Act," which would prohibit state or private adoption agencies that get federal money from discriminating on the basis of sex orientation or gender identification.

"We need to take politics out of adoption decisions," Crist said. He said Florida's current law "requires family law judges to ignore what is right for a child ... There is only one question that matters: What is in the best interest of that child?"

• Civil unions with "the full range of legal protections" should be available, including "access to a loved one in the hospital, inheritance rights, the fundamental things people need to take care of their families."

• Same-sex couples should have access to the federal COBRA program, which extends employer-provided health benefits including spouse and dependent benefits for those who have lost jobs.

•Immigration rules allowing family reunification should apply to gay couples.

•He favors vigorous action against anti-gay bullying in schools.

In a news release, Meek campaign manager Abe Dyk said Crist can't be trusted. "The only thing Charlie Crist says today that you can believe tomorrow is that he wants to be elected.

"While Kendrick Meek was on the front lines of the fight for equality in Florida, conservative Charlie Crist stood in strong opposition."

Smith said the position paper arose in part from a conversation she had with Crist about two weeks ago about the Martin Gill case, testing the state same-sex adoption ban.

Gill, of North Miami, and his male partner took in a severely neglected young boy and his infant brother, both suffering medical problems, as foster children. Over several years, they defied predictions of psychologists that the boys might too emotionally damaged ever to bond with a family.

In 2008, a family court judge granted the couple's plea to adopt the boys, but state Attorney General Bill McCollum has appealed the ruling, seeking to uphold the state's ban.

Smith said Crist told her he belives the law is wrong, and his staff asked for information on other issues that were included in the paper.

While she praised Crist's paper, Smith added, "There's no position he's taken that a majority of Floridians and Americans don't already support."

She also noted that Meek "has been a longtime champion of equality. He was one of the first elected officials to speak out against Amendment 2 [Florida's same-sex marriage ban] and actively opposed it, while Gov. Crist spoke in favor of it."