Our guest blogger is Crosby Burns, special assistant for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at American Progress.

Earlier this week, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) urged the Obama administration to ensure equal treatment of LGBT applicants in the financial aid process. “Taxpayer-funded financial aid is often being misallocated based on sexual orientation when it should be based solely on financial need,” Kerry wrote in a letter addressed to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Indeed, as a result of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the FAFSA is often unable to count parents, spouses, step-children, and other family members as part of an individual’s application for financial aid. The resulting unequal treatment leads to significant distortions in the allocation of financial aid for applicants who have two mothers or two fathers. As a recent report from the Center for American Progress found, the FAFSA can rob these families of much needed aid to finance applicants’ higher education or could even result in a larger financial aid package to families headed by same-sex couples. LGBT youth and transgender applicants also experience significant barriers to submitting a FAFSA on time, complete, or at all.

For its part, the federal government assigned more than $134 billion in financial aid to more than 14 million students last year, making it the single largest grantee of aid. Since most other financial aid depends on the FAFSA application for federal aid, these distortions will trickle down throughout the entire financial aid application process, even outside of the federal government’s support.

On October 20, 2010, Howell High School teacher Jay McDowell asked a student to leave his classroom for expressing his religious view that he does not accept homosexuality or condone homosexual acts. Now, the student’s mother, Sandra Glowacki, is suing the teacher and district for violating her son’s constitutional rights. But the lawsuit brought by the Thomas More Law Center on her behalf suggests more of a crusade against all anti-bullying policies, calling them “indoctrination” that is “hostile toward religious opposition to homosexuality.”

The incident took place on Spirit Day, a day on which teachers and students wear purple to remember those who committed suicide after experiencing relentless bullying. The lawsuit calls Spirit Day “a day in which activists exploit the tragic suicidal deaths of homosexual teenagers to promote acceptance of homosexuality in the public schools,” and then admonishes the school for allowing the teacher to participate by wearing a shirt remembering Tyler Clementi and showing a film about anti-gay bullying:

The purpose of the “anti-bullying” day, the “Tyler’s Army” t-shirts, and the movie was to indoctrinate students into believing that homosexuality is normal and to shift the blame for the destructive lifestyle of homosexuals to those who believe it is wrong and immoral. In particular, the purpose is to make those who oppose homosexuality on moral and religious grounds to feel guilty for holding those beliefs and to portray those beliefs as intolerant, harmful, hateful, and destructive. In sum, the purpose of the “anti-bullying” campaign, which is sponsored, promoted, and endorsed by the NEA, the MEA, the HEA, GLAAD, and the School District, is to shift the blame, guilt, and shame felt by homosexuals onto those who oppose homosexuality on moral and religious grounds.

The suit does nothing to sugarcoat the anti-gay Catholic beliefs Glowacki instilled in her children, calling homosexual acts “acts of grave depravity,” “intrinsically disordered,” and “contrary to the natural law,” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” In fact, while simultaneously claiming that the student was defamed by being called “anti-gay” and that the actions against him would “chill a person of ordinary firmness,” it goes on to suggest that any policy that tries to limit anti-gay speech or favor pro-gay speech is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Ultimately, this suit seems to have little to do with the student’s rights. Rather, Thomas More Law Center is using this opportunity to demand that it be perfectly okay to condemn, ostracize, bully, and harass students for their sexual orientation, the consequences be damned. (HT: Towleroad.)

Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt is asking Catholics to recite a “special prayer” condemning the right of gay and lesbian people to marry, the Star Tribune is reporting. The request is just the latest effort in the archdiocese’s campaign to whip up support against the state’s pending constitutional amendement to outlaw marriage equality. The prayer explains that marriage is “a source of blessing and joy,” before asking parishioners to deny this happiness to gay people:

Heavenly Father,

Through the powerful intercession of the Holy Family, grant to this local Church the many graces we need to foster, strengthen, and support faith-filled, holy marriages and holy families. May the vocation of married life, a true calling to share in your own divine and creative life, be recognized by all believers as a source of blessing and joy, and a revelation of your own divine goodness. Grant to us all the gift of courage to proclaim and defend your plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman in a lifelong, exclusive relationship of loving trust, compassion, and generosity, open to the conception of children.

We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, who is Lord forever and ever. Amen.

In October, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis called on priests to appoint special committees to “spearhead this effort at the local level” so as to prevent a “detriment to the common good of society.” The Catholic Conference is one of three arms of “Minneosta for Marriage,” the coalition advocating for the discriminatory amendment. In a joint statement, the MCC and Archdiocese proclaimed that anyone who does not support the amendment is not in “good standing” with the church, although Catholics largely support marriage equality, even at higher rates than the general public in some polls.

Fortunately, the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, has passed a resolution opposing the proposed constitutional amendment, explaining, “The Episcopal Church in Minnesota has always stood with the marginalized” and “embraced both the Gospel mandate of love of neighbor and the Baptismal Covenant imperative to respect the dignity of every human being.”

Fox News’ Chris Wallace challenged Mitt Romney on his past support for gay rights during Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in Sioux City, Iowa. The former Massachusetts governor defended his 1994 claim that he would fight harder for equality than Ted Kennedy, explaining that he “does not believe in discriminating against people based upon their sexual orientation,” and could have fought “for anti-discrimination in a way that would be even better than Senator Kennedy, as a Democrat, who would be expected to do so.” He insisted, however, that he has consistently opposed marriage equality. Watch it:

The answer didn’t satisfy Rick Santorum, however, who dredged up false accusations that Romney voluntarily signed same-sex marriage licenses himself. Santorum’s claim is a popular misconception put forward by right-wing groups that conflates the state’s One Day Marriage Designation with actual marriage licenses. As the Massachusetts state website explains, “[t]he One-Day Marriage Designation is not a marriage license,” but rather a certificate the governor can issue to “designate non-clergy individuals to solemnize a marriage.” Once same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, the Romney administration granted designation applications to same and opposite sex couples.

In reality, Romney tried to limit the impact of the ruling by ordering town clerks to enforce a little-known 1913 law to deny licenses to out-of-state couples and even testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of a federal marriage amendment.

In 1994, Romney also promised to co-sponsor the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act and claimed that marriage policy should be left to the states. He now supports a federal constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage and a complicated three-tier system for married-gay couples.