The media is buzzing. King & Spalding, the law firm hired by House Republican leaders to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), decided to drop the case.
Last week, we ran a public campaign calling out K&S’s hypocrisy: the firm touted its efforts to recruit and retain lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) lawyers, while choosing to argue against their equality in court.
As I wrote in today’s Washington Post, we just couldn’t stay silent while K&S advertised a high rating on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, even as it sought to defend discrimination.
K&S made the right call in the end – and we thank them. But House Speaker John Boehner is still planning to spend more than half a million of our tax dollars on defending DOMA in court.
We need to build on the momentum of K&S’s decision – and make it clear to Speaker Boehner that he’s out of touch with the American people.
Add your name to our petition to Boehner: “Don’t waste my tax dollars defending discrimination. Repeal DOMA!”
Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly want Congress to focus on jobs and the economy, not hurting loving couples.1 Yet Speaker Boehner and House Republicans decided to hire an outside law firm (at great taxpayer expense) after President Obama announced that his Justice Department would no longer defend DOMA.
That’s where you came in. As the LA Times pointed out, “The decision came a week after the million-member Human Rights Campaign launched a publicity war to ‘shame’ King & Spalding…”
You reached out to K&S, and you spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. You enabled HRC to immediately spring into action, informing the firm’s clients as well as student groups at law schools where K&S competes to hire the top graduates.
Your voices joined with those clients and students to help K&S understand it had a stark choice: maintain a pro-equality reputation that attracts clients and new recruits, or stand on the wrong side of history. The firm made the right call. And it showed we’re at a tipping point in our culture. Most Americans now find anti-LGBT discrimination shameful.
Yet despite this setback, it’s clear that Boehner still plans to spend hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars to uphold this odious law.
We can’t back down. If tens of thousands of us speak up right now, we can show Speaker Boehner that attacking same-sex couples has left him out of step with the American people.
Click here to add your name now.
While Americans struggle to recover from a recession, we just want our government to do right by us. Instead of wasting time and money defending discrimination, Speaker Boehner should support the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation that would repeal DOMA and end our federal government’s policy of treating married gay and lesbian couples like second-class citizens.
Thank you for everything you do – and for joining us in this effort.
Sincerely,
Joe Solmonese
President
1A recent poll from HRC and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research shows 51 percent of Americans oppose DOMA while 34 percent favor it. 54 percent of Americans want Congress to focus on jobs and only 32 percent would prefer Congress spend time defending DOMA.
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