During 15 years as a child-welfare judge, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman has been a lawyer, a social worker and even a bit of a cheerleader, encouraging troubled parents to make better choices.

When Lederman rules later this month on a gay foster father's petition to adopt the two small boys he has raised since 2004, she will have to wear yet another hat: social scientist.

In a one-week trial peppered with words like ''null hypothesis,'' ''central limit theorem'' and ''Pearson correlation,'' a half-dozen experts in psychology, epidemiology, sociology and family studies presented starkly different views on whether gay men and women can be as good at parenting as straight people. The trial, which ran Oct. 1-6, was closed to the public, but The Miami Herald has obtained a transcript of the testimony.

Florida law bans gays from adopting. Valerie J. Martin, a Florida assistant attorney general who defended the statute, said same-sex couples are at far greater risk of many social ills, and ``putting children who are already at risk into such a household would increase the stressors that these children already experience as a result of their placement in foster care.''

Countered Leslie Cooper, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who represents the foster father: ``We heard, over the course of this trial, heaps and heaps of scientific evidence about gay parents and gay people. There is absolutely no reasonable scientific dispute on the subject of whether children who are raised by gay parents are disadvantaged in any way.''

The judge's ruling will determine whether a 4-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother can be adopted by Frank Gill, the North Miami foster parent who has raised the boys for four years, and his partner. Lederman said she will decide on the adoption later this month.

Florida is the only state that bans all gay people from adopting. This fall, a Circuit Court judge in Key West declared Florida's ban unconstitutional, although the decision is unlikely to hold much sway because it was not appealed to a higher court. Since the state is fighting Gill's attempt to adopt the two boys, a decision by Lederman to declare the law unconstitutional would be of far greater consequence.

Most likely, the case will ultimately be decided by the Third District Court of Appeal or the Florida Supreme Court.

CHILDREN'S STAKE

Who will be allowed to adopt in Florida is a question with significance not just for prospective parents. Only two states have a larger number of foster children waiting to be adopted, said Florida State University social-work professor Patricia Lager, who testified for Gill at the trial.

About 22,000 Florida children are in state care, and more than 4,000 foster children are eligible for adoption, according to the state Department of Children & Families.

Gill, 47, never set out to challenge Florida's controversial adoption law, which allows drug abusers and felons to adopt but imposes a blanket ban on gay people. But in December 2004, a DCF abuse investigator asked Gill and his 34-year-old partner to care for two half-brothers for a few months while their parents tried to regain custody.

It became clear within months that the boys' parents would never be able to win back the right to raise them -- their parental rights were terminated in 2006 -- and an early plan for the boys to live with a grandmother fell through.

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