The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by four men who challenged Florida’s ban on adoption by gay couples, avoiding another contentious fight over gay rights.

Florida is the only state with a blanket law prohibiting homosexuals from adopting children, but the high court was told that other states could now feel free to copy the ban.

Opponents argued that the 1977 law, passed at the height of Anita Bryant’s anti-homosexual campaign, was irrational because it excluded potential parents for thousands of abandoned children.

…

“The plain and well-understood purpose of the ban was to tell gay people to go back into the closet,” ACLU attorney Matthew Coles told justices in a filing.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has maintained that the children, often products of troubled and unstable backgrounds, should have a father and a mother.

“It is rational to believe that children need male and female influences to develop optimally, particularly in the areas of sexual and gender identity, and heterosexual role modeling,” justices were told in a filing by Florida’s attorney, Casey Walker.

Yeah, fuck that guy. Dude had his chance to make the right choice, decided to govern like a bigoted piece of shit.