Thea Spyer

Roberta Kaplan’s mom did not take the news well. She started banging her head repeatedly against the wall.

It didn’t quite go down that way. But it would have been more interesting if it did.

Clinton said that the marriage equality activist “helped change hearts and minds, including mine.”

WASHINGTON — Edith Windsor emerged from the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to loud cheers from marriage equality supporters gathered outside the high court, on this second day of back-to-back same-sex marriage cases.

WASHINGTON — In the second of back-to-back gay marriage cases, the Supreme Court is turning to a constitutional challenge to the law that prevents legally married gay Americans from collecting federal benefits generally available to straight married couples.

Edith Windsor, the New York widow who was forced to pay $363,000 in estate taxes in 2009 upon the death of her spouse, Thea Spyer, made her case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, filing a brief in her challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The U.S. Supreme Court does not have the authority to rule on the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, argued a Harvard professor in a brief filed Thursday with the high court.

One of two cases that the Supreme Court has decided to hear in the coming year will challenge the Defense of Marriage Act. Although this is ostensibly a legal case, it is really about competing narratives – and there is nothing same-sex marriage opponents offer that comes close to the touching tale of Edie Windsor and her deceased wife Thea Spyer. Their struggle not only tugs at the heartstrings, it transforms the heart into a marionette, dancing merrily to sappy love songs. This case screams out for fair resolution, and the court runs the risk of delegitimizing itself as draconian and doctrinaire if it denies this couple justice.

While marriage equality supporters have been giving thanks for the recent ballot box victories and the Second Circuit’s Windsor v. U.S. decision, the most recent Defense of Marriage strike-down by a federal court in mid-October, the law-focused among us are also looking ahead to the next big question: What will the U.S. Supreme Court do on Nov. 30, when it is scheduled to decide on the marriage-related cert petitions pending before it?

NEW YORK — A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that the federal “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) unconstitutionally discriminates against married same-sex couples.