In a harshly worded opinion, the Kentucky Court of Appeals has barred judges from allowing lesbians to adopt as though they are a stepparent.

Ruling 3-0 in a Jefferson County case, the court said that stepparent adoptions are allowed only when the stepmother or father is married to the biological parent, and marriages between gays are forbidden by both statute and Kentucky’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

In a 62-page ruling issued Friday about the case, the court said that with a “wink-wink” and a “nod-nod,” Family Court Judge Eleanore Garber and lawyers for a lesbian couple ignored those laws.

And as many as three or four family court judges in Jefferson County may have allowed such adoptions, the opinion said.

“It is not this or any court’s role to judge whether the legislature’s prohibition of same-sex marriage … is morally defensible or socially enlightened,” Judge Glenn Acree of Lexington wrote for the court in the decision that criticized Garber and the lawyers involved.

“Nor is it this or any court’s role … to craft any means by which the legal consequences of such a prohibition may be negated or avoided.”

The case involved two women identified only as S.J.L.S. and T.L.S. and their son, identified as Z, who is now 8.

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