Knowing that a diamond engagement ring would draw too many questions at work, she gave Edie a diamond brooch to symbolize their commitment. It was two years before the Stonewall Uprising, and 36 years before Massachusetts became the first U. Edie and Thea were both Jewish, though neither was traditionally observant. Thea was born in Amsterdam in to a wealthy Jewish family that managed to escape the Holocaust, fleeing first to England and then to the U. By , Edie and Thea had moved in together in Greenwich Village and bought a beach house in Southampton, where they spent the next 40 summers.
They loved to dance and entertain; Thea was a good cook, and they hosted elaborate parties for friends, including annually on Memorial Day to celebrate their anniversary. She created a computer consulting company and devoted herself to local gay and lesbian activism, and to Thea.
In , Thea was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Though her mobility decreased over the decades, she continued her career as a clinical psychologist, seeing patients until the very last day of her life. Prohibited from marrying, Edie and Thea had no rights as a couple under the law; when Edie sought to name Thea as the beneficiary of her IBM pension, she was rebuffed.
But by the early s, decades of LGBT activism were beginning to bear fruit, with state and local non-discrimination ordinances and domestic partnership registries offering some legal recognition to couples. When New York City created a registry in , Edie wanted them to be among the first.
In they traveled to Toronto, Canada, where marriage had been open to same-sex couples for four years, and married with a few friends in attendance. Thea died two years later, in February At the time the law passed, there were none.
Although gay couples could not marry anywhere in the world, litigation in Hawaii was on the verge of changing that. Photograph by Ted Eytan. Edie decided to sue. Kaplan took the case, eventually in collaboration with the ACLU. Edie won at the district court, the circuit court, and then the Supreme Court by a vote of in Just two years later the court ruled that no state could exclude same-sex couples from the right to marry; marriage equality became the law of the land.
Edie burnished the legacy of her 44 years with Thea Spyer through joyful post-Supreme Court appearances around the country and around the world. President Obama thanked her for her service to the nation; gay people cried and hugged her on sight. She loved all of it, including telling the story of the great love she and Thea had shared.
She remarried at the end of her life, to a much younger woman named Judith Kasen. They worried that she was too old, that she might die during the case, and that suing for a large tax refund would not make her a particularly compelling plaintiff. She eventually found a champion in Roberta Kaplan, then a partner with the firm Paul, Weiss, and they were joined by the A.
That picture told the world that, after all the years of rejections from family members, employers, psychiatrists, and the government, members of the L.
I worked for President Clinton when he signed the bill, in Six months after the Windsor ruling, Kaplan explained to me how it went beyond her expectations. Now, four years later, Donald Trump is President, and he is aggressively rolling back the administrative and other protections for L.
There is already litigation challenging the constitutionality of such an effort. Americans from employment discrimination. But none of what Trump is doing now is likely to succeed in turning back the clock on the impact of the Windsor decision, and of Edie Windsor herself.
There is certainly no precedent in our history for such a reversal of liberty. There was no turning back from Brown v. But a late-in-life decision ensured that the LGBTQ activist, who died on Tuesday at 88, as her wife Judith Kasen-Windsor confirmed, would find her name a solid part of American history. The Windsor decision said that, in 13 states and the District of Columbia, which recognized same-sex marriage, such couples were entitled to the same federal benefits offered to their heterosexual counterparts.
On the wider question of whether marriage equality is a constitutional right, the Supreme Court ruled that it is in , and that same-sex marriages must be recognized in all states. The decision marked the first time the U. It was a big win. Windsor now finds herself transformed into an icon of the gay-rights movement. She wears the mantle well.
Feisty, funny and extroverted, Windsor has been, at different points in her life, a leader. At 13 she was elected vice president of her eighth-grade class. The homes she shared with Spyer in New York City and the Hamptons were salons for many people in the gay and lesbian community. Write to Olivia B.
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