Our guest blogger is Kimberly Barton, intern for LGBT Progress.

A coalition of organizations released a report today outlining the disparities LGBT parents and their children face due to states’ refusal to recognize their legal ties. Outdated, biased, and discriminatory laws, policies, and practices are preventing same-sex parents from securing the same legal recognition to their children that would otherwise be afforded to them if they were different-sex parents. This report — Securing Legal Ties for Children Living in LGBT Families — outlines the many ways states can remove barriers to legal parental recognition for same-sex couples, extended families, and unmarried couples who are raising a child or seek to foster or adopt a child.

Current laws and policies need to be evaluated in order to make the legislative changes that would provide stability and security to over two million children that are being raised in LGBT families today. The report points out several areas where legislative action is needed to promote security and stability for children of LGBT families. Donor insemination laws as well as foster care laws are of particular interest:

Donor Insemination Laws

When lesbian couples in committed relationships choose to become parents, often times they conceive through donor insemination. Although only one mother gives birth to the child, both mothers act as parents and should be recognized as such by the law. Unfortunately, in 35 states, this is not the case — the non-biological mother of a child conceived through donor insemination is viewed as a legal stranger and has no legal rights of parenthood.

States can respond to this issue with solutions that rightly recognize the legal status of same-sex parents and their children. For couples in legally recognized same-sex partnerships, parental presumption laws can allow non-biological mothers to become the presumed parent to the child their partner conceives through donor insemination. For couples not in a legally recognized partnership, consent-to-inseminate provisions can act as a legal recognition of parenthood. They require the non-biological parent to sign that they legally consent to the insemination of their partner and wish to be seen as a parent to their child in the eyes of law.

However, even if states do allow for these two means of obtaining legal parenthood for the non-biological mother of a child conceived through donor insemination, these protections do not always carry from state-to-state. Repealing the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act would offer more security and stability to children of LGBT families by enabling married LGBT couples to have full legal ties to their children no matter the state they live in.

Foster Care

LGBT parents currently foster an estimated 14,000 foster children — 3 percent of all foster children — even though only six states have laws on the books that specifically support LGBT foster parents. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia are silent on laws and policies regarding LGBT foster parents. When states are silent, discrimination and stigma sometimes prevent LGBT parents from becoming foster parents to the over 408,000 children in foster care (as of 2010). For example, in some states where there is no official law or policy against LGBT parents fostering children, child welfare agencies are allowed to reject LGBT foster parents based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. Unless discrimination against LGBT parents is specially prohibited in foster care laws, this kind of discrimination can keep foster children from finding loving, supportive homes.

Children’s best interest is at stake when the law does not recognize their legal parents or allow them to become part of a family. The action steps outlined in the report are key to ensuring our laws and policies support the best interests of children across America.

The anti-gay American Family Association’s talking head Bryan Fischer has made his share of offensive comments, but recently he has repeatedly engaged in what may be his most deadly lie: that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. In January, Fischer featured AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg on his show and endorsed his bogus ideas that recreational drug use among gay men is what causes AIDS, not the HIV virus. A few weeks later, Fischer claimed that God would cure AIDS if gay men simply stopped using drugs and “poppers” (recreational stimulant inhalants) and stopped having sex. Fischer then clarified that he believes that it is poppers that break down the immune system; HIV is merely a scheme for scientists to get research funding.

Today, Fischer again spread his harmful lies about HIV and AIDS. Responding to the FDA approval of Truvada, a pill that helps reduce the risk of HIV infection, he tweeted, “New pill stops HIV virus. But won’t stop AIDS since caused by extensive inhalant drug use, not HIV.”

Rowena Johnston, Vice President of Research for amFAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, responded to ThinkProgress that denialism like Fischer’s contributes to the lost lives of hundreds of thousands of people with HIV:

JOHNSTON: The fact that HIV causes AIDS is about as controversial as saying the Earth orbits the sun. To say otherwise makes a person look ill-advised at best. The scientific research that supports HIV as the cause of AIDS has debunked every argument made by AIDS denialists. With extremely rare exceptions, the virus and/or antibodies can be found in every person with AIDS. Untreated HIV infection does consistently lead to the symptoms of AIDS. Being HIV positive does increase the chance of dying earlier than otherwise expected. Scientists can explain in detail how infection occurs and how it causes AIDS. Antiretroviral therapy – which can only exert an effect if HIV is present – does delay the onset of AIDS. Antiretroviral therapy does prolong the lives of those with HIV.

We’d all be happy to dismiss unfounded statements made by non-experts if it were not for the fact that AIDS denialism has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with HIV. The South African government for years subscribed to the dangerous fiction that HIV does not cause AIDS and that it could be treated by vegetables – their intransigence resulted in at least 170,000 HIV infections and 340,000 deaths in that country alone. We have enough work ahead of us to fight HIV. We shouldn’t let AIDS denialists distract us from the important work of bringing about an AIDS-free generation.

Johnston encourages readers to visit AIDSTruth.org for further understanding “why the things AIDS denialists say are flat-out wrong.”

Fischer generally represents the fringe extreme of religious conservatives, but his impact cannot be underestimated. His voice was prominent enough to bring a swift end to Richard Grenell’s appointment as Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesperson merely because Grenell is gay. Given the extreme harm inherent in the mythology Fischer promotes, public figures of all political stripes should be quick to distance themselves from him.

Last year, Elton John urged Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to protect a government program (ADAP) that provided medication to low-income HIV/AIDS patients. Then-Surgeon General Frank Farmer responded with the counter-intuitive reasoning that cutbacks were necessary because the demand for the drugs exceeded the resources available. Instead, he suggested that John come to Florida to perform a fundraising concert for ADAP.

Today on NPR, John explained how unhelpful that response was for the kind of work the Elton John AIDS Foundation does:

JOHN: [EJAF is] an AIDS organization, and whenever anybody’s funding is cut — and it’s usually cut, especially in this case in Florida, [for] the people that can afford it least … then we’re going to write a letter about it. And we wrote a letter to [Florida Gov. Rick Scott] himself. … It’s not my job to [fund a state's AIDS program]. It’s the government’s priority to do that. I can’t do benefit concerts for Florida, for the people with AIDS in Florida. It’s their responsibility; they need to do what’s right. And cutting funding for the people that [can] least afford it is criminal.

We can solve this AIDS problem forever if the government gives the funding. If people are encouraged to come out and say they’re HIV-positive and they’re given their treatments, then obviously the people who are marginalized — like intravenous drug users, prisoners, people who are made to feel less-than — if they’re given the support of the government and they’re given the funding, then it’s going to help solve the spread of AIDS and HIV in America. We have to try and get rid of this shortsightedness when it comes to HIV and the stigma around it.

Indeed, HIV medication funding continues to be malnourished. Many states cut back last year, and Republican efforts to cut Medicaid present one of the largest threats to what funding is still available.

The Boy Scouts of America announced today that it will continue its long-standing policy of discrimination against LGBT scouts and scout leaders and will take no action on proposals to reconsider that policy. This comes despite growing pressure to lift the ban from Eagle Scouts, an Ohio mom who was removed from her position as a Cub Scout den leader purely because she is a lesbian, and two prominent national board members.

A spokesman said a secret 11-person committee, appointed in 2010 to study the issue, “came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts.” The group dismissed the announcements by Ernst & Young CEO James Turley and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, both members of the BSA national board, that the group ought to lift its ban. In a statement, the group’s leadership announced:

Scouting believes that good people can personally disagree on this topic and still work together to achieve the life-changing benefits to youth through Scouting. While not all board members may personally agree with this policy, and may choose a different direction for their own organizations, BSA leadership agrees this is the best policy for the organization.

Last month, the BSA said that a resolution introduced in April proposing that local chartering units be able to determine whether to welcome LGBT participants and leaders would be “handled with respect.” With no apparent board consideration, the group says it will take no further action on the proposal.

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin called BSA’s move “a missed opportunity of colossal proportions.” With 86 percent of Fortune 500 companies explicitly protecting gay and lesbian employees from discrimination, LGBT servicemembers now free to serve openly in the U.S. military, and every other major national youth organization opting not to discriminate, BSA has opted to stand alone in clinging to a policy that drives its membership down and flies in the face of its own core tenets.

Conservatives have been outraged about the passage of California’s FAIR Education Act (SB 48) last year, which mandates that schools develop curricula that are LGBT inclusive. Last year, they attempted to challenge it with a referendum, but failed. Now, they have failed again to overturn the law with a ballot initiative. LGBT-inclusive education isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

It’s important to remember the significance of SB 48. Anti-gay forces in this country regularly allege that homosexuality is a threat to children, encouraging parents to feel like they need to protect their children from learning about even the existence of gay people, lest they be “indoctrinated” or even molested or “recruited.” Consider the situation in Erie, Illinois, where parents objected to a children’s book that on one page pointed out that some families include same-sex parents. The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) argued that through GLSEN’s inclusive curriculum, students could be “indoctrinated into homosexual behavior.” Here is a quick recap of other negative responses to the FAIR Education Act:

- RANDY THOMASSON: “Realize that the raft of school sexual indoctrination mandates imposed on all children in California government schools amounts to mental molestation.”

- Signature collectors said that overturning SB 48 would protect children from child molesters.

- The campaign to overturn the law argued that kids will learn about Chaz Bono instead of George Washington.

- NOM’S JOHN EASTMAN: Evil will be with us always, and it requires constant vigilance to defeat… We need to be involved in the immediate defense of threats against marriage, but also take a long-range view by educating the next generation about the importance of the issues we’re confronting.

But despite the backlash against the law, which hasn’t even been implemented in all school yet, research has shown it will make an important difference. GLSEN analyzed data from its 2009 school climate survey and found that having LGBT-inclusive curricula helped students feel safer, experience less victimization, miss less school, and define their peers as accepting. The California Safe Schools Coalition similarly found that inclusive curricula helped students perform better academically and feel more connected to their schools. Conservatives know that learning the basics about sexuality is the key to ending anti-gay stigma, which is why they stand opposed at every opportunity.