Today, Edith “Edie” Windsor is celebrating a bittersweet victory. She is still a widow, but the estate left to her by her partner of over 40 years and her legally married wife in is now hers with no federal strings. The Supreme Court struck down the central portion of the Defense of Marriage Act giving all married couple, same-sex or opposite-sex the same rights federally.
In the majority ruling, Justice Kennedy wrote, “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.”
This all started when Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in Canada, a marriage later recognized in New York where they lived. The two women had been together for 4 decades and were only able to make their union official in 2007. Sadly, Thea died only a few years later and Edie Windsor inherited her estate along with a federal estate tax bill or almost $400,000. This would never have happened had they been a straight couple. The case ended up in Federal court where DOMA was ruled unconstitutional and then it moved to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Windsor does not establish a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. This couple was legally married under state law and so the federal statute violated their right to equal protection. Congress was effectively stepping on a right reserved for the states.
What this means is that same-sex couples who are legally married will be entitled to equal treatment under federal law. That means equal treatment as far as income taxes and Social Security benefits, etc.
At the same time the court tossed out the case supporting California’s Proposition 8 and left a previous ruling by a Federal judge in place that struck down the law. That means same-sex marriages can resume in California. Good news for the West Coast!
But what about the LGBT community in Texas? Well, as one might expect Texas is a whole different story.
Here in the Lone Star State, marriage between same-sex couples is still prohibited. And if history proves anything, that isn’t going to change for a while. Remember, slavery was only ended two years after the Emancipation Proclamation here in Texas. Thus we have the celebration of Juneteenth (June 19, 1865) and not Sept. 22, 1862, when the document was signed into law. That took federal troops arriving in Galveston and I suspect a similar effort will be required for LGBT Texans to be legally married in this state.
We have an obstreperous attorney general, Greg Abbott, who has spewed his homophobia with an “opinion” that local governments and school districts that offer same-sex partner benefits are violating the state Constitution. Now this is only an opinion, but such statements form the State AG go a long way toward quenching any actions by school districts and local governments who might fear reprisal from the state.
We also have a Legislature that refuses to remove the old 21.06 “Sodomy” Law from the books even though 10 years ago to the day of the DOMA ruling, it was ruled unconstitutional in the historic Lawrence v. Texas decision.
Texas even refuses to accept the court’s ability to grant a divorce for a same-sex marriage performed in another state. Conservative Texas politicians are stubborn as mules when it comes to LGBT rights and since both houses of our Legislature are controlled by the GOP, I don’t see this changing in the near future.
That said, it is still a glorious day for equality in our country and I admit I was watching the SCOTUSblog (Supreme Court live blog) and got a little teary when the message that the Windsor v. United States ruling came down on the side of the plaintiff.
This ruling shows how far and how fast the struggle for equal rights for LGBT Americans has gone in recent history. Ten years after Lawrence vs. Texas and same-sex marriage is no longer prohibited by federal law is a big leap. We should celebrate, even if it does not have the same meaning as it does for Edie Windsor and our brothers and sisters in California. We should celebrate this as a big victory since the court recognized the inequalities DOMA codified into law.
And once our celebration is over, we must turn to the nuts and bolts of Texas politics, for it is that machine that must be changed. With the other ruling by the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act it will be more difficult, but we can do it. We can turn this stubborn state around. We can halt the Texas march backward and move us forward but it will take lots of work. Already the majority of American’s feel we deserve equal rights, now if we can only educate enough Texans we might have another celebration to commemorate two years from now — June 26!
Hardy Haberman is a longtime local LGBT activist and board member for the Woodhull Freedom Alliance. His blog is at DungeonDiary.blogspot.com.