Edith Windsor was honored for being an
LGBT rights pioneer last week during Logo TV's Trailblazers
special.
Windsor is the courageous woman who
challenged the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and won last year at
the Supreme Court. The ruling has been used to challenge similar
state bans.
“Fifty years ago I said often, 'I
don't want to be identified with those queens,'” Windsor said in
accepting the honor. “And then Stonewall happened and they
overturned a couple of police cars and changed my life. And it was
the beginning of my sense of community. Some of you are too young to
know, there was a long period when there were gay men's events and
lesbians' events, fewer lesbian events by the way. But never the
twain met. Some of us had friends on the other side of the wall but
not a lot, and certainly not most of our social lives.”
“When the AIDS crisis happened, in
the middle of the pain and the illness and the terror the lesbians
came pouring in to act as caregivers, to carry out the garbage, to
buy the groceries, to do the laundry.”
“The glorious thing that happened was
that wall between us came down, and we saw each other for the first
time. And when we saw each other, we loved what we saw and our
self-esteem began to grown. And with that we began to come out.”
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