Non­fic­tion

Then Comes Mar­riage: Unit­ed States v. Wind­sor and the Defeat of DOMA

  • From the Publisher
May 19, 2015

In a mat­ter of sec­onds, Attor­ney Rober­ta Kaplan knew it was the per­fect case. Togeth­er for forty-four years, Edie Wind­sor and Thea Spy­er — Jew­ish women bat­tling through society’s homo­pho­bia and Spyer’s mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis — mar­ried in Cana­da in 2007. But when Spy­er died two years lat­er, the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment refused to rec­og­nize their mar­riage, forc­ing Wind­sor to pay a huge estate tax bill. In this land­mark work, Kaplan describes her strat­e­gy and shares insights into the dra­mat­ic oral argu­ment before the Supreme Court jus­tices. Then Comes Mar­riage depicts the Wind­sor-Spy­er love sto­ry behind the water­shed case Kaplan’s dif­fi­cult com­ing-out jour­ney, her rela­tion­ship with her client, fam­i­ly, and com­mu­ni­ty, and the fas­ci­nat­ing unfold­ing of the case that became U.S. v. Wind­sor. Full of nev­er-before-told details, this is the momen­tous account of a his­toric, polit­i­cal ride and ulti­mate vic­to­ry for gay civ­il rights. Of note: Major events occur around Yom Kip­pur and Passover, which add res­o­nance to the story.

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