Four years ago, Thea Spyer died of a heart condition. Edie Windsor, her partner for 42 years, was faced with a massive federal estate tax bill even though she and Spyer had been legally married in New York since 2007--a bill she wouldn't have had to pay if Thea had been a man. Thus began a legal battle that ended on Wednesday when the Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act's ban on recognizing same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Now, in an op-ed for CNN, Windsor gives us a birds-eye view of how the battle unfolded.
I lived with and loved my late spouse, Thea Spyer, for more than four decades in love and joy, and in sickness and health, until death did us part. When Thea died in 2009 from a heart condition two years after we were finally married, I was heartbroken.
On a deeply personal level, I felt distressed and anguished that in the eyes of my own government, the woman I had loved and cared for and shared my life with was not my legal spouse, but was considered to be a stranger with no relationship to me.
On a practical level, because of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, I was taxed $363,000 in federal estate tax that I would not have had to pay if I had been married to a man named Theo instead of a woman named Thea. Even if I had just met Theo, married him and never even lived with him before he died, the tax would have been zero. So, overwhelmed with a sense of injustice and unfairness, I decided to file a lawsuit to get my money back.
Several law firms told her that it was the wrong time to file such a case. But Roberta Kaplan saw it differently. Quoting Martin Luther King, Kaplan, a partner with Paul, Weiss, said, "There is no wrong time." And as a result, Section 3 is now dead.
Windsor fully understands how historic this ruling is, even if it is only a 5-4 decision.
I have been so honored and humbled to represent not only the thousands of Americans whose lives have been adversely impacted by DOMA, but those whose hopes and dreams have been constricted by that same discriminatory law.
Because of the historic Supreme Court ruling in my case, the federal government can no longer discriminate against the marriages of gay and lesbian Americans. Children born today will grow up in a world without DOMA. And those same children who happen to be gay will be free to love and get married -- as Thea and I did -- but with the same federal benefits, protections and dignity as everyone else.
To all the gay people and their supporters who have cheered me on, thank you. I'm sure that Thea is thanking you, too.
Windsor is due to be grand marshal of tomorrow's LGBT Pride March in New York, where she's been a fixture for several years. She practically danced the entire route last year, and it's a safe bet she'll do the same tomorrow.