Write Your Hero - Adriana, 15 — Edith Windsor
A young girl walks through the elementary school halls. Taunts about her big nose and ears fade into the background as she stares across the room and fixes her eyes on her classmates- her one classmate- that never knew she stared at her like that every day.
“Edie-” her boyfriend calls.
“Edith! Pay attention!” her teacher scolds.
The young girl snaps to attention and stares down at her tattered school shoes in embarrassment.
Edith Windsor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. Edie’s father owned a successful business, but once the Great Depression fell, he lost his store and their home.
However, this obstacle was unable to bar Edie from pursuing what she loved. Despite the infrequency of a female mathematician in the 1930s, Edie obtained her masters degree in mathematics at New York University. She attended university alongside her older brother’s best friend, Saul Windsor, who proposed during their third year at university.
A young woman walks through the halls of a prestigious university. The inappropriate catcalls and whistles fade into the background as she stares across the room and fixes her eyes on her classmates- her one classmate- that never knew she stared at her like that every day.
“Edie-” her husband calls.
“Mrs. Windsor!” her professor scolds.
Once again, Edie fell in love with a female classmate. She divorced Saul to pursue her love. However, after Windsor decided she could not live life as a lesbian, they remarried after graduation. Less than one year after, they divorced again, and she admitted she longed to be with women.
After Edies’s graduation from university, she further broke the status quo by finding work at IBM, America’s leading computer software company at the time. Throughout her 16 years there, she attained the highest level technical position in the company and was well known for her “top-notch debugging skills,” with which she helped many LGBTQ groups become “tech
literate.”
Shortly after her divorce, in 1963, Windsor met Thea Spyer, who was making strides in her own field, being a female psychologist. Two years after meeting, they started dating. In order to avoid discrimination, Edie told her coworkers that Thea was not her partner, but that she was engaged to Thea’s fictional older brother. When Edie tried to put Thea on her insurance, she was told that only a man and woman may be listed as partners. Despite these seemingly insurmountable barriers, Spyer asked Windsor to marry her in 1967, with a circular diamond pin instead of a ring, so as not to expose Edie’s sexual orientation to her coworkers.
In June 1969, Windsor and Spyer returned from vacation to the Stonewall Riots- a series of riots demanding the cease of LGBTQIA+ police violence and demanding rights and equality. To Thea and Edie, these riots were inspirational. In the following years, the couple publicly participated in LGBT marches and events like these.
Several years later, Edie quit her job at IBM to pursue advocacy. In 1975, Edie began volunteering with various LGBTQIA+ organizations. She helped found Old Queers Acting Up, an improvisation group utilizing skits to address social justice issues. She also served on the board of Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders for many years.
In 2002, Spyer suffered a heart attack. In 2007, doctors told her she had less than a year to live. By this time, New York had not yet legalized gay marriage, but the two wanted more than anything to be married before Thea passed. To climb this mountain, they married in Canada, with Canada’s first openly gay judge, Justice Harvey Brownstone, presiding. On February 5, 2009, Spyer died due to heart complications, leaving her entire estate to Windsor. Shortly after Spyer’s death, Edie Windsor was hospitalized with stress cardiomyopathy, most likely due to grief. Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses after Thea’s death, but was barred from doing so due to Section 3 of the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA).
In 2010, Windsor filed a lawsuit against the federal government because of the ingrained homophobia in DOMA, as it singled out legally married same-sex couples and practiced “differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification.” The Department of Justice declined to defend the constitutionality of Section 3, but thankfully the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group intervened. District Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. She ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, just as Edie requested, including interest. Her ruling was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2012, thereby eliminating an unfair and prejudice law. This was one of the largest political successes along the path of gay marriage in America.
Windsor continued to be a public advocate for same-sex marriage in the years following. She helped introduce the Respect for Marriage Act, and her court case supported the legendary Obergefell v. Hodges two years later, where the Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage. Edie’s determination also paved the way for the Obama administration to extend the federal rights and legal protections that LGBTQIA+ couples enjoy today.
Through every mountain she climbed, every taunt she ignored, every time she was brave enough to share her truth, Edie Windsor was standing up for kids like me- for queer Jewish kids in America. She was doing it for kids my age and for queer people everywhere.
Edie Windsor has inspired me to join LGBTQIA+ organizations in my area and create a Gender-Sexuality Alliance at my own school so that I can inspire other young children to accept who they are, remind them that there is nothing to be ashamed of if they can’t help but stare at their same-sex classmate across the room, that it’s ok if it takes them years to come to terms with their identities, that they have the power to scale any mountains that come their way, and that it is perfectly within their rights to marry whoever they love.