Philadelphia has honored Edith Windsor
by naming a city block after her.
Unveiled on Sunday, Edie Windsor Way is
located in the heart of Philadelphia's gayborhood, at the
intersection of Locust Street and South 13th Street, near
1301 Locust.
Windsor died last September at the age
of 88.
Her successful challenge to the Defense
of Marriage Act (DOMA) helped pave the way for nationwide same-sex
marriage.
Windsor's first wife, Thea Spyer, died
in 2009, two years after the women married in Canada. Windsor
challenged DOMA, which prohibited the federal government from
recognizing the legal marriages of gay and lesbian couples, after she
received a $363,000 estate tax bill following Spyer's death.
The 2013 Supreme Court ruling that
struck down a key provision of DOMA is also credited with providing
the legal framework for the court's 2015 landmark ruling in
Obergefell, which found that
gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.
In 2016, Windsor
married Judith Kasen-Windsor, a banking executive.
Windsor
was born in Philadelphia. After she divorced her husband in the 60s,
she moved to New York. In
a 2012 interview, she said she “came to New York to be a
lesbian.”
(Related:
Cincinnati
names street after marriage equality plaintiffs Jim Obergefell, John
Arthur.)