Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer who
represented Edith “Edie” Windsor at the Supreme Court, says she's
amazed that her client got engaged two years before the 1969
Stonewall riots.
Kaplan appeared last week on C-SPAN's
Book TV to promote her book Then Comes Marriage: United
States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA.
Windsor met her future wife, Thea
Spyer, in the 1960s. Spyer died in 2009, two years after the women
married in Canada. Windsor challenged the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA), which prohibited the federal government from recognizing the
women's marriage.
The 2013 Supreme Court ruling that
struck down a key provision of DOMA is also credited with providing
the legal framework for this year's landmark marriage equality
ruling.
“Edie's life kind of tells a
panoramic story of how life was for gay and lesbian people in this
country in the 20th century,” Kaplan
said.
Kaplan said that Windsor moved to New
York after divorcing her husband to “be gay.”
Windsor met Spyer at a restaurant in
Greenwich Village and said that it was love at first sight for her.
Spyer proposed with a circular diamond pin instead of a ring to avoid
suspicion.
“And that started an engagement that
lasted 40 years. What's so incredible about that is it was 1967, two
years before the Stonewall riots. So, the idea that in 1967 it would
even occur to two women to get engaged, that they would have the
self-esteem and the courage to even think those thoughts is
incredible.”
Kaplan went on to describe the
circumstances that led to Windsor hiring her.