Judith Kasen-Windsor, Edie’s surviving spouse (center), with Roberta Kaplan (at far right) and Kaplan’s wife, Rachel Lavine (between them). | DONNA ACETO
PHOTO ESSAY BY DONNA ACETO | Within hours of the news that Edie Windsor, the heroic warrior for marriage equality and LGBTQ dignity, had died at age 88, hundreds turned up outside the Stonewall Inn to pay tribute to her. Edie was remembered as a person who loved others so much that Facebook on the evening of September 12 was full of photos of people who’d stopped her on the street and gotten her to agree to having a picture taken with them.
Roberta Kaplan, who successfully argued Edie Windsor’s challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act before the Supreme Court in 2013. | DONNA ACETO
Her attorney in her successful DOMA lawsuit, Roberta Kaplan, said she never imagined Edie ever being gone.
Edie’s close friends Marianne Roberto Fine, Lori Roberto Fine, and Cathy Renna. | DONNA ACETO
Michael Adams, executive director of SAGE, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, where Windsor served on the board. | DONNA ACETO
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer recalled Windsor always sitting up front at events and truly paying attention, while Assemblymember Deborah Glick talked about Edie’s love of having fun. Her surviving spouse, Judith Kasen-Windsor, said Edie would get so angry at television coverage of the Trump administration, Judith worried she’d have a heart attack.
Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. | DONNA ACETO
Former Council Speaker Christine Quinn said everyone had to carry on Windsor’s activism, telling the crowd, “You must keep fighting or Edie will come back and haunt you.”
Brendan Fay, who helped arrange Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer’s 2007 trip to Toronto to marry. | DONNA ACETO
Cathy Marino-Thomas, Windsor’s comrade in the fight for marriage equality, ended the vigil by shouting, “Act up! Fight back!” | DONNA ACETO
The final speaker, former Marriage Equality chair Cathy Marino-Thomas, recalled Edie and her first wife, Thea Spyer, throwing themselves into the group’s work and ended by shouting, “Act up! Fight back!,” a chant the crowd took up.
