On the heels of today's historic Supreme Court decision ruling DOMA unconstitutional, the case's plaintiff, Edie Windsor, appeared at the NYC LGBT Center to speak about the verdict. "We won, all the way," she declared. "We won everything we asked and hoped for."
Windsor is the public face of the landmark decision, and it was her—"a five-foot-tall, 100 pound lady"—whose story helped shape it. She married her partner Thea in 2007 after over four decades together, but when Thea passed away two years later, Windsor was slapped with $363,000 in federal estate taxes. Under DOMA, her marriage was considered invalid by the federal government.
"Over the past two and a half years many people have asked me, 'Why did you decide to sue the United States government over a tax bill?'" she said. "On a practical level, due to 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." But on a more personal level, she noted, "I felt distressed and anguished that in the eyes of my government, the woman I 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."
The new ruling effectively reverses this; Windsor's marriage is now federally recognized, and her tax burden is no more. "I think it's the end of teenagers falling in love and not knowing what the future holds," she said, adding that discrimination practices were on their way out. Explaining her own struggle to speak honestly about her marriage with colleagues, Windsor admitted, "Internalized homophobia is a big bitch," prompting loud cheers from those gathered.
Asked what she thought Thea would have said had she been there, Windsor replied, "she would have said, 'You did it, honey!'"
