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William769

(55,124 posts)
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 12:59 AM Sep 2012

octogenarian lesbian widow in New York, is going toe-to-toe with the House Republicans on the

on the Defense of Marriage Act. Edith Windsor

Several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act could reach the Supreme Court within the next year, but only one involves the estate tax that surviving same-sex spouses are forced to pay when a partner dies. The consequences can be severe, as Edith Windsor, the 83-year-old plaintiff in that case, learned after her wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009.

A mathematician and former IBM programmer, Windsor calculated the financial impact of 1996’s DOMA, which just added to the unquantifiable pain of losing her partner of more than 40 years. She paid over $363,000 in federal estate taxes on two properties the couple owned, in Manhattan and on Long Island, solely because the U.S. government did not recognize their marriage. The women married in Canada in 2007 after first becoming engaged in 1967, and Windsor cared for Spyer, a clinical psychologist, as she battled multiple sclerosis for three decades.

“However, if Thea had been Theo, I would have had to pay no estate tax whatsoever,” she says. “Even if I had met and married ‘Theo’ one month before he died, I would have had to pay no estate tax.”

That unequal treatment did not compute, and Windsor sued the government with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. She argued that DOMA violated her equal protection rights, and in June a federal judge in New York agreed and found section 3 of the law, which limits the federal definition of marriage to unions of a man and a woman, unconstitutional.

http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2012/09/10/fight-edith-windsors-life?page=0,0

To be her age and have to deal with this? It's a disgrace.

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octogenarian lesbian widow in New York, is going toe-to-toe with the House Republicans on the (Original Post) William769 Sep 2012 OP
Well, thank goodness she had the cajhones to go after her rights. Tigress DEM Sep 2012 #1
Thats true. William769 Sep 2012 #2
Any reasonable human sees this as stupid and wrong. efhmc Sep 2012 #3
What she said explains the injustice perfectly. DevonRex Sep 2012 #4
Agreed. William769 Sep 2012 #5
Exactly! forget all the fundie, xxqqqzme Sep 2012 #7
Yes. Two human beings who deserve to be DevonRex Sep 2012 #12
K & R AnotherDreamWeaver Sep 2012 #6
To be her age and have to deal with this? ToxMarz Sep 2012 #8
Exactly why they should have been allowed to be seen as married in the legal sense... WCGreen Sep 2012 #9
Du rec. Nt xchrom Sep 2012 #10
Thanks for posting this, many do not realize the unfair taxing that is done to same sex couples. unapatriciated Sep 2012 #11
. n/t porphyrian Sep 2012 #13
When people don't believe that marriage rights are about civil rights gollygee Sep 2012 #14
Wave of Briefs Filed in Edie Windsor’s DOMA Case William769 Sep 2012 #15

Tigress DEM

(7,887 posts)
1. Well, thank goodness she had the cajhones to go after her rights.
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 01:03 AM
Sep 2012

She shouldn't have to, but she did and that's pretty awesome!

DevonRex

(22,541 posts)
4. What she said explains the injustice perfectly.
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 01:14 AM
Sep 2012

It made me gasp. If Thea had been Theo and they had married a month before Theo died there wouldn't have even been an estate tax to pay. But because she was Thea, Edith had to pay $363,000 in estate taxes even though they'd been together for four decades. Four decades. Think about that. They had married in Canada at some point along the way.

xxqqqzme

(14,887 posts)
7. Exactly! forget all the fundie,
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 03:46 AM
Sep 2012

trumped up biblical yammering. It is, fundamentally, a civil rights issue.

DevonRex

(22,541 posts)
12. Yes. Two human beings who deserve to be
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 10:43 AM
Sep 2012

treated like any other two human beings who stayed together through richer and poorer, in sickness and in health.

Civil rights, human rights, plain old common sense and decency.

ToxMarz

(2,154 posts)
8. To be her age and have to deal with this?
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 05:31 AM
Sep 2012

To be her age and have to deal with this? It's a disgrace.

Yes it is and it is also awesome and inspirational. Hope I can kick that much ass still when I'm 83. I'm sure being in love helps with the burning fire.

WCGreen

(45,558 posts)
9. Exactly why they should have been allowed to be seen as married in the legal sense...
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 05:38 AM
Sep 2012

This bull shit needs to stop. the bigotry of the past has no place in the 21st century and frankly speaking, if we don't address this now then how can we call ourselves a modern civil society.

I can't get over the fact that people truly believe that the acts of a stranger will weigh on how they are measured when God makes the ultimate choice between heaven and hell. What kind of God would do that?

unapatriciated

(5,390 posts)
11. Thanks for posting this, many do not realize the unfair taxing that is done to same sex couples.
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 06:26 AM
Sep 2012

My daughter has a home business and her wife is not afforded the same tax breaks that I and my husband would get if we had a small business. This is a civil rights issue that needs to be addressed and fixed.

edited to add that she is supporting her wife while she is getting her degree and can not even claim her as a dependent. This is soooo wrong in sooo many ways.

gollygee

(22,336 posts)
14. When people don't believe that marriage rights are about civil rights
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 11:04 AM
Sep 2012

and that marriage is a governmental rights issue, this is a good example to show them.

So totally unfair.

William769

(55,124 posts)
15. Wave of Briefs Filed in Edie Windsor’s DOMA Case
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 12:09 PM
Sep 2012

Support for Edith “Edie” Windsor, the lesbian widow challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, continued to grow Friday as more than 15 parties, including members of Congress and three state attorneys general, filed briefs in support of her case, where oral arguments are scheduled in a federal appeals court in New York City on September 27.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Windsor, announced the multiple friend-of-the-court brief filings. Parties include the city of New York; the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont; 145 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives; the Partnership for New York City, a major business lobby; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and labor, legal, and religious organizations.

“The number and scope of the parties supporting Edie’s case illustrate the breadth of the harms that DOMA inflicts on married same-sex couples,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project, in a news release. “It is time for the courts to bring an end to this discriminatory law once and for all.”

A federal judge in New York ruled section three of DOMA, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, unconstitutional in the case, Windsor v. United States, in June. The Republican-controlled House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group took up the defense of the 1996 law after the Obama administration declined to defend it last year, and BLAG has appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals encompassing New York, Connecticut and Vermont.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2012/09/10/wave-briefs-filed-edie-windsor%E2%80%99s-doma-case

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