Gay marriage battle hinged on a great love story

Make sure you check out the photo album for Edie and Thea.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/25/opinion/kaplan-doma-edie-windsor/
CNN Opinion
Gay marriage battle hinged on a great love story
By Roberta Kaplan
updated 3:08 PM EDT, Wed June 25, 2014

(CNN) -- Shortly after we filed our case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, my client Edie Windsor was asked what it felt like to be a plaintiff suing the federal government. Edie, who grew up in a middle-class household after the Great Depression, said it was one thing to be "out" as a lesbian but another thing entirely to be the "out lesbian who happens to be suing the United States of America."

One year ago on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Edie's case by issuing a landmark decision that gay people have have the same right to dignity and respect under the law that straight people do.

The so-called Defense of Marriage Act, also known as DOMA, was passed in 1996 and defined marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman. As a result, otherwise valid marriages of same-sex couples were rendered null and void under federal law and gay married couples were denied the full range of federal benefits that straight married couples received.

When we filed Edie's case in 2010, only five states and Washington, D.C., permitted same-sex couples to marry. When the Supreme Court's decision came down last year, 12 states and D.C. did. Today, 19 states and D.C. -- representing almost 44% of the U.S. population -- do. If you had told me last June that the world would look the way it does today for gay people, I would have said you need to be more realistic....

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