Our guest blogger is Crosby Burns, Research Associate with the Center for American Progress.

This spring the Supreme Court will issue a final ruling on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. This odious law treats families headed by legally-married same-sex couples as second class citizens, depriving those families the same economic protections, access to safety net programs, and tax breaks afforded to other families. Largely because of this law—and contrary to commonly held stereotypes—families headed by same-sex couples are more likely to experience poverty, report lower incomes, and often face a higher tax burden compared to families headed by different sex couples.

Last year, the Obama Administration rightly determined that DOMA unfairly discriminates against Americans by arbitrarily denying one group of citizens (gay people) access to government programs and tax benefits. Consequently, the Department of Justice rightly refused to defend the law and promote discrimination against same-sex couples in federal court.

House Republicans, on the other hand, decided to take up the mantle of defending discrimination. To do so, these so-called “fiscal conservatives” have decided to foot taxpayers with $3 million in legal fees to ensure DOMA has its day in court.

As shown in an infographic released today by the Center for American Progress, here are nine alternative ways that House Republicans could use $3 million other than defending discrimination before our nation’s High Court:

• Provide health care coverage to 1,497 children through state Medicaid programs.
• Help 37,443 victims of domestic violence access emergency shelters and related services.
• Provide nutrition assistance to 1,873 people through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP).
• Give 203 homeless youth access to transitional living programs.
• Increase employment opportunities through job training for 17,422 workers.
• Offer job training to 12,167 veterans, many who were forced out of the military due to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
• Ensure that an additional 75,000 people are tested this year for HIV.
• Pay back 500 same-sex couples for the $6,000 in additional taxes they pay because of the discriminatory effects of DOMA.
• Rent a billboard in the center of Times Square promoting anti-bullying initiatives for gay and transgender youth.

Last year, the release of a confidential memo revealed the National Organization for Marriage’s intent to “drive a wedge” between gays and blacks by trying to co-opt the language of “civil rights.” In the wake of President Obama’s second inaugural address comparing Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall, NOM and other anti-equality conservatives are reinvesting in this failed strategy to try to create more racial divides.

NOM’s weekly review this week is dedicated to dog-whistle messages trying to rally African Americans against LGBT equality. The group’s president, Brian Brown, eagerly offered his explanation of civil rights and co-opted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to put icing on the racist cake:

In an interview I gave to NBC News recently, I told them point blank: “Same-sex marriage is not a civil right. To try and compare in any way the attempt to redefine marriage with the Civil Rights movement is simply false. I think that the president’s forgetting about the most important group affected by this and their civil rights, and that’s children having the civil right to have both a mom and a dad.”

The fight continues. Let us continue to stand together in defense of timeless truths, truths we know from both Nature and Nature’s God. Justice for children is the great cause for which we strive.

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Alveda King, Dr. King’s niece, who is often a surrogate for NOM but who mostly focuses on opposing a woman’s right to choose, added to the wedge tactics:

KING: Now in the 21st century, to see the NAACP advancing abortion [and] homosexual ‘marriage,’ what they’re doing is they’re promoting reproductive genocide… African-Americans are coming out and burning membership cards to the NAACP. Thousands of African-Americans across this land have spoken out against the president’s agenda, which includes homosexual marriage, abortion, contraceptives.

These attempts to speak on behalf of the entire black community are unfair and unfounded, particularly because they completely erase the existence of LGBT people of color. NOM’s race-wedging strategies did not succeed in the Maryland marriage fight last year, and they will continue to fall on deaf ears.

The Russia Parliament, the Duma, passed the first reading of a bill banning “propaganda of homosexualism” today with only one dissenting vote and one abstention — leaving the proposal just two more readings and President Vladimir Putin’s signature away from being law. It is unclear how “propaganda” and “homosexualism” will be ultimately be defined and enforced, but the law would punish public events and dissemination of information on LGBT lifestyles to minors with fines of up to $16,000 if passed.

The bill has caused an outcry from the global LGBT movement and domestic protests out of concerns the discriminatory nature will be used to effectively silence the LGBT community in Russia; Just earlier this week activists opposing the law were assaulted and twenty LGBT activists and militant Orthodox Christian activists were detained during protests outside the Duma this morning.

A similar local law in St. Petersburg previously used to arrest participants in pride parades was upheld by the Russian Supreme Court last year, but limited in scope to enforcement against direct appeals to minors to engage in homosexual activity. Other former Soviet states including Ukraine have promoted similar anti-LGBT equality agendas.

Paul Clement

Both briefs challenging marriage equality at the Supreme Court, in the cases defending the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, cited a 2002 study called “Marriage from a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children and What Can We Do About It?” to argue that children are better off with opposite-sex parents. However, Carol Emig, president of the non-profit Child Trends that conducted the study, told the Washington Blade that there is nothing in it to substantiate an argument against same-sex parenting:

EMIG: The Child Trends brief in question summarizes research conducted in 2002, when same-sex parents were not identified in large national surveys. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn from this research about the well-being of children raised by same-sex parents. We have pointed this out repeatedly, yet to our dismay we continue to see our 2002 research mischaracterized by some opponents of same-sex marriage.

In the House Republicans’ brief defending DOMA, for example, lead attorney Paul Clement uses the study to emphasize that children are somehow better off with their biological parents:

One of the strongest presumptions known to our culture and law is that a child’s biological mother and father are the child’s natural and most suitable guardians and caregivers, and that this family relationship should be encouraged. To be sure, our tradition offers the same protections for an adoptive parent-child relationship, once it is formed.  But nonetheless when both biological parents want to raise their child, the law has long recognized a distinct preference for the child to be raised by those biological parents.   And this bedrock assumption is grounded in common sense and human experience:  Biological parents have a genetic stake in the success of their children that no one else does.

Of course, only relationships between opposite-sex couples can result in children being raised by both of their biological parents.  Therefore, when government offers special encouragement and support for relationships that can result in mothers and fathers jointly raising their biological children, it rationally furthers its legitimate interest in promoting this type of family structure in a way that extending similar regulation to other relationships would not.

Clement’s argument obviously makes no sense on its face and is offensive to the unflinching love and support that adoptive parents, foster parents, step-parents, and of course same-sex parents have for the children they are raising. If his suggestion that the institution of marriage somehow favors parents “raising their biological children” were true, it would have to simultaneously discourage parents from raising non-biological children. The very groups that oppose marriage equality encourage adoption services (like the Catholic Church), so this argument for “biological children is hypocritical.” Clearly, it is being used specifically to stigmatize same-sex couples, and it doesn’t even have the research to support that claim.