(
)
She’s the gay Rosa Parks.
It took a slight, 5-foot-tall, 84-year-old lady to forever change the course of history. Edith Windsor lived her entire adult life in Greenwich Village, hiding in the closet while working for IBM and lying, every day, about who she really was.
“I lied all the time,’’ she admitted yesterday.
The lies ended in 2007, when a newspaper announcement revealed something Edie had long denied. Edie proclaimed that she’d gotten married in Canada — to her longtime girlfriend, Thea Spyer.
The woman who, for more than 40 years, advised her beloved to “keep it hot.’’ Oh my.
To Edie (pictured after yesterday’s ruling), this small act of defiance by a senior citizen was no biggie. Not anymore.
“People thought we were just good friends,’’ she chuckled yesterday, at a packed press conference.
Because of this brave, shy woman, no longer will the government be able to deny gay, married spouses federal benefits. No longer can they tax a widowed half of a couple to smithereens, just because she’s a lesbian.
What’s more, she has succeeded in winning me over.
As a longtime skeptic of gay marriage, I can no longer deny that it is right. Sometimes two people, of whatever gender, are meant to be together. It’s that simple.
“Wow,’’ said Edie, after learning of her victory.
Edie and Thea met in the 1960s. In ’77, Thea was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and Edie nursed her before Thea died of heart disease in 2009. That’s what you do for someone you love.
But after Thea was gone, Edie got the shock of her life.
The government snatched an incredible $363,000 in estate tax from Edie’s pocket. If she’d married a guy named Theo just a week earlier, the feds wouldn’t have touched a dime. It was cruel.
Edie was told that “in the eyes of my government, the woman I had loved and cared for and shared my life with was not my legal spouse, but was considered a stranger with no relationship to me.’’
That hurt. And so, a fighter was born.
Edie brought her case all the way to the Supreme Court. And yesterday, by a 5-4 vote, the high court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. It also paved the way for a resumption of same-sex marriage in California.
But Edie doesn’t like being compared to Rosa Parks, the African-American who started a movement for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955 Alabama. Edie minimized her own contribution to equal rights as “some accident of history.’’
She preferred channeling her late wife.
“You did it, honey,’’ Thea would have said.
She sure did.