COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage is harmful to children with gay parents, according to a court filing this week by a children’s rights group.

Citing a number of studies, the Lawyers’ Committee for Children’s Rights said in its filing Wednesday that children of gay couples thrive like any kids in two-parent homes but are discriminated against by South Carolina’s law. Children of married couples have access to tangible financial benefits, like health insurance or support in the case of the parents’ divorce, but in a state with a ban like South Carolina’s, that’s not the case.

“The truly deleterious effects for these children come not from same-sex unions but from the denial of their recognition as parents equal before the law,” attorneys for the group wrote, noting that depriving children of those kinds of benefits has no bearing on whether gay parents will want to get married or not and only ends up harming the kids themselves. “What is the State’s purported interest in treating children of same-sex relationships differently? There is none.”

The nonprofit advocacy group filed its papers Wednesday in one of the lawsuits challenging South Carolina’s ban on gay marriage. In that case, filed in federal court in Columbia, a lesbian couple legally married in Washington, D.C., wants South Carolina to recognize their marriage. The couple has three children.

Two other lawsuits ask state officials to let couples married in other states legally change their names here. In another case, a Charleston couple wants a federal judge to allow them to get a marriage license there.

Attorneys for the state have opposed all challenges in court, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal of a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision allowing same-sex marriage in Virginia. South Carolina is the only state in the circuit refusing to allow the marriages.

Attorney General Alan Wilson has argued that the Columbia and Charleston cases both belong in state court, saying that he and Gov. Nikki Haley, the named defendants, lack enforcement power over the state’s same-sex marriage ban. The state Department of Motor Vehicles has several weeks to respond to the lawsuits its faces over name change requests.

Same-sex unions are now legal in at least 30 states, but a ruling by one federal appeals court has made it likely the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately be forced to make a ruling on the issue. On Thursday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that states have the right to set rules for marriage and that changing a definition that dates to “the earliest days of human history” is better done through the political process, not the courts.

That ruling also acknowledged that gay and lesbian couples are equally capable of being in loving, committed relationships and effectively raising children but noted those facts don’t mean states must suddenly believe gay marriage bans violate the Constitution.

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Kinnard can be reached at https://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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