LGBT+ History Month – Edith Windsor

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For the final instalment in our LGBT+ History Month series is LGBTQ+ rights activist Edith Windsor. 

Edith “Edie” Windsor was an American LGBTQ+ rights activist and technology manager at multinational tech company IBM (International Business Machines Corporation). Well known for her landmark victory and fight against the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), setting the stage for marriage equality, Edie challenged the prejudices that marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals experienced.

Edie was born on 20 June 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S, to James and Celia Schlain, a Russian Jewish immigrant family. Five years after graduating from Temple University in 1950, she pursued a master’s degree in mathematics. She joined IBM shortly after finishing, where she worked for the next sixteen years. During this time, she also studied applied mathematics at Harvard University on an IBM fellowship. Edie was a respected woman in her field, even obtaining the title of highest level technical position at IBM during her career.

Throughout school she had dated boys around her age, but later recalls having several crushes on girls. In her third year of college, Edie’s older brother’s best friend Saul proposed to her, she accepted. During their engagement Edie fell in love with one of her female classmates. At the time homosexual relationships were not seen as equal to heterosexual ones. So Edie reconciled her relationship with Saul and they married after graduation in May 1951. One year after their marriage Edith confided in Saul about how she had longed to be with women. She divorced Saul shortly after and left for New York City.

Edith met Thea Spyer (an Amsterdam-born psychologist) in 1963 at Portofino, a restaurant in Greenwich Village and popular hangout spot amongst the LGBTQ+ community. They occasionally saw one another at events and eventually began dating two years later. They kept their relationship a secret from their co-workers and Edie invented a relationship with Thea’s fictional brother Willy. Although gay marriage was not legal anywhere in the US at that time, Thea proposed to Edie in 1967 with a ciruclar diamond pin. This was the start of their 40 year engagement.

Six months later, the secretly engaged couple moved in together in Greenwich Village and after that bought a small house in Long Island. Despite the ever-present fear of being outed, their love story is one that stood the test of time. Managing to maintain their hard-won careers, drinking and dancing at underground queer clubs, sunning at the Hamptons in the summer, traveling from Suriname to Venice, they loved each other with such devotion and passion. The couple also publicly participated in LGBT marches and events following the stonewall riots of 1969. 

In 1977, Thea was sadly diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis. The disease caused a gradual, but ever-increasing paralysis. Edie used her early retirement to become a full-time carer as they lived out their happy yet challenging life together.

In 2002 Thea had a heart attack and was diagnosed with aortic stenosis. A few year’s later doctors told her that her condition meant she had less than a year to live. New York had still  not yet legalised same-sex marriage, so the couple married in Toronto, Canada, in 2007, with Canada’s first openly gay judge, Justice Harvey Brownstone. 

After three years of happy marriage Thea passed away from complications related to her heart condition and Edie became the executor and sole beneficiary of Thea’s estate, but had to pay more than $360,000 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance. Had the law recognised the validity of their marriage, this would not have been the case. She was barred from doing so by Section 3 of DOMA, stating the term “spouse” only applies to marriages between a man and woman. This is where United States v. Windsor began. 

Edie filed a lawsuit against the federal New York government, demanding a refund for the taxes she had paid and stating DOMA singled out legally married, same-sex couples for “differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification”. 

In 2012, Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional under the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, including interest. This was put into action later on in the year. The US Supreme Court then heard arguments on the case in March 2013, issuing a decision later that year affirming Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. This led to the Obergefell v. Hodges and three related cases. The Supreme Court held that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry anywhere in the nation, with all the protections and privileges of heterosexual couples. 

Edie, the widow of a woman she had lived much of her life with, became the lead of the second most important Supreme Court ruling in the national battle over same-sex marriage rights. She is a pioneer for LGBTQ+ rights and continued to volunteer after her wifes death for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the East End Gay Organisation, the LGBT Community Center, 1994 Gay Games New York, and helping to found Old Queers Acting Up. By changing history, she changed the world.  

It is hard to imagine existing at a time and place where the whole world is against you. Putting on a facade, hiding a love so strong, resilient and powerful as they did. This is sadly a reality for many of the LGBTQ+ community still to this day. More than 70 countries across the world criminalise LGBTQ+ people for simply loving and living as themselves. Eleven of these jurisdictions impose the death penalty on such individuals. The fight for equal LGBTQ+ rights is far from over but there is always hope. As we pay tribute to all the pioneers who have fought before us, we remember those still fighting. 

So whoever you identify as, whoever you decide to love, you are valid, acknowledged and amazing. Love is love, it’s not attached to a gender, race or religion, it stands alone, and it is never a crime.

“If you have to outlive a great love, I can’t think of a better way to do it than being everybody’s hero.” – Edith Windsor 

Further reading and viewing on Edie Windsor:

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