If you live in Florida, want to adopt a child and you're homosexual or bisexual, the state has a message for you:

Forget about it.

The official language can be found in item No. 3, under Section 63.042 of the Florida Statutes. A single, terse sentence.

"No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual."

That ban - the only one like it in the nation - was voted into law by the Legislature in 1977. Its supporters, led by antigay crusader Anita Bryant, said that homosexuality is dangerous to children. The law has withstood several court challenges. There has not been a murmur in Tallahassee of changing it.

Slowly, though, a drumbeat of opposition is rising. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal suit challenging the law. Last week, prodded by the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, nine former Florida lawmakers said they were sorry they voted in favor of the ban 25 years ago.

"This law was always wrong," said former state Sen. Don Chamberlin of Clearwater.

"We hope it will be overturned," the retired legislators wrote in a group statement.

The issue will get a national hearing at 9 tonight, when talk- show host Rosie O'Donnell speaks her mind in a two-hour taped interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC's Primetime Thursday. Part of an orchestrated coming-out for the comedian, O'Donnell's appearance is also a platform for her favorite cause: adoption.

O'Donnell has three children, ages 2 to 6, whom she adopted in New York. She also is a licensed foster parent in Florida. (In addition to her Manhattan apartment, O'Donnell has a home on Star Island in Miami Beach, where she plans to live full-time after her TV show ends in May.)

During parts of 2000 and 2001, O'Donnell and her partner fostered a preschool girl from Florida. They returned her to the state's custody and the child will be adopted by another family. Had O'Donnell moved to adopt her, though, she would have been blocked by Florida's law, which says neither gay couples nor individuals may adopt.

"It doesn't make any sense whatsoever," said Barbara Graffeo of New Beginnings, a New York adoption agency that opened a Largo office last year. "If the state places children in gay foster homes, why can't gay people adopt?"

The ACLU suit claims Florida has violated the rights of homosexuals and demands that they be considered as potential adoptive parents. The case, with three gay families serving as plaintiffs, was thrown out at the trial level last summer but has been appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Several child welfare organizations filed briefs in support of the ACLU, including the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which was started by the late founder of Wendy's, who was adopted. Coincidentally, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced last month that it supports homosexual adoption, saying that children do not suffer emotionally or psychologically from being reared by gay parents.

Florida law says the opposite. Casey Walker, a Vero Beach attorney who will represent the Department of Children and Families in the lawsuit, said he will argue that the trial court judge "was correct when he found that the law was rationally related to the best interests of children, that they're best raised by a mother and a father who are married."

The Christian Coalition of Florida has supported the state's ban on gay adoption because of the group's stand against homosexuality on moral and religious grounds.

Laws on gay adoption vary widely from state to state. The most liberal state is Vermont, which allows homosexual couples to adopt as two parents in an openly same-sex relationship. Vermont also sanctions gay marriage in the form of same-sex unions. Cohabiting, unmarried couples may adopt whether gay or straight.

Some states officially recognize "second-parent" adoptions, in which one partner adopts first, then the other petitions the court to adopt later. Other states don't address the issue; gay couples have to hope for a sympathetic judge.

In many states, though, gay couples are forced into an uncomfortable situation. Only one of the partners may adopt, as a single parent. That leaves the other partner with no legal parental rights. If the couple splits up, visitation rights are not assured. If the legal parent dies or is incapacitated, the child can be taken away from the surviving partner.

Some states approach, but don't quite match, Florida's law. Utah effectively bans gay adoption by prohibiting adoption for cohabiting couples. Mississippi is more specific: It bans lesbian and gay couples from adopting. Single gays, however, may adopt.

In Florida, the law weeds out gay parents at the beginning. Anyone who wants to adopt a child must fill out an application from the Department of Children and Families. Immediately after the question about an applicant's criminal record, there's one on sexuality. It quotes the law, then it asks the applicant to check Yes or No in response to these statements:

I am a homosexual. I am bisexual.

"Once you get to that point, if you're gay, you can put your pencil down or you can commit perjury," said ACLU spokesman Eric Ferrero.

Several years ago, Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau came upon that question. They were filling out the application, hoping to adopt a 3- year-old boy they had fostered in Miami since he was an infant.

"We didn't want to lie," said Croteau. "So we left it blank."

Their application was rejected. Incomplete, the state said.

Lofton and Croteau are in their mid 40s. They have been together 18 years. They met in nursing school, moved to Miami together and went to work at Jackson Memorial Hospital. For a time both were assigned to the pediatric HIV unit, taking care of infants born HIV- positive, often drug-addicted, abandoned by their mothers.

A social worker asked if they'd be willing to take one or more of the babies home. They did. In a foster care agreement with the state, Lofton quit his job to stay home and care for the children full-time.

A decade later, Lofton and Croteau were the parents of three children, two of them HIV-positive. One is biracial, two African- American.

A fourth child, born HIV-positive and severely crack-addicted, lived until age 6 in their care.

Three years ago, the family moved to Portland, Ore. They wanted more of a small-town atmosphere and to be near Lofton's parents. Two more children, wards of Oregon's foster care program, joined the family.

Last summer, Lofton got a certified letter from the state of Florida. It was about Bert, their 10-year-old son, the one who was born HIV-positive but became negative. They describe him as a happy, healthy fifth-grader who loves soccer and swim team.

Long-term foster care is not in this child's best interest, the state wrote. So because you can't legally adopt him, we will start looking for a permanent adoptive family.

Lofton and Croteau were stunned. They decided to take action. They signed on as plaintiffs in the ACLU's class-action suit.

"This is not about gay rights," said Croteau. "It's not about Steve and me. It's about every child's right to have a safe, permanent home. If that happens to be a gay home, great. A heterosexual home, great. It doesn't matter."

The other ACLU plaintiffs include a Miami-Dade County man who is legal guardian for a young boy who was lived with him for several years. He would like to adopt the boy, now 9. The others are a Key West couple who have fostered a variety of children, from infants to 15-year-olds, and would like to be allowed to adopt.

Tonight, television viewers will hear more about the lawsuit and meet Bert, his parents and siblings. They'll appear on Primetime alongside O'Donnell as she talks about what Florida's law does to gay families.

Often what it does is drive them away, said John Fricker, staff attorney for Gift of Life Adoptions in Pinellas Park.

"I talked to one guy recently, a (gay) doctor who wanted to adopt. He was planning to move to another state."

Fricker said he gets a call asking about gay adoption every couple of weeks.

"I just inform them we can't do it, that we're barred by the statute."

Contrast that with Dawn Smith-Pliner, who does about one adoption a month for gay couples at her Vermont agency, AAA Friends in Adoption. Gay adoption is at least a third of her business, she said.

"A lot of agencies (in other states) will say, 'Oh, you're gay? Wink, wink. Okay, a single person.' But we've never wanted to falsify a same-sex relationship. Vermont prefers that gays or lesbians finalize (an adoption) as a couple."

It used to be that gays determined to adopt in Florida had to hide their sexuality, said Elizabeth Schwartz, a Miami Beach family law attorney with many homosexual clients. But as gay parenting has become more common, there is "an increasing unwillingness to lie," she said.

One option is to maintain a home in Florida but set up legal residency in another state where adoption laws are more lenient. Other gay couples fall back on the single-parent adoption. Schwartz helps them draw up documents that spell out the legal rights of the nonadoptive partner: authorization to consent to medical treatment for the child, designation as the child's guardian if the other parent dies or becomes disabled, the right to joint custody or visitation if the family breaks up.

Schwartz called Florida's rigid stance against gay adoption "an outmoded form of bigotry."

Plus, it's not fair to children, said Chris Zawisza, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who is director of the Children First Project, a statewide organization that advocates quality care for children in the welfare system.

"There are about 3,400 children in the foster care system in Florida who have no permanent adoptive home," said Zawisza. "And yet Florida is excluding a whole segment of the population from even applying to adopt these children."

Zawisza represents the juvenile plaintiffs in the ACLU suit, including Lofton and Croteau's son, Bert. She said if the state removed Bert from their home, "It would be devastating. From what we know about attachment and bonding, it would be devastating."

Leslie Cooper, the lead attorney for the adult plaintiffs, called Florida's law "an anomaly. Blanket prohibitions, like Florida's, are not considered good child welfare policy because they limit the pool of prospective parents."

Ironically, the state has expressed a similar concern. A standard disclaimer on the Department of Children and Families adoptive application says discrimination is illegal. It names some of the standard protected classes, including race.

In the last sentence, it pledges the state will not discriminate against one other group: "communities or populations that may previously have been under-utilized as a resource for placing children."

- St. Petersburg Times staff writers Thomas C. Tobin and Curtis Krueger contributed to this report.