Please remember the courage of Edith Windsor, who filed the case that challenged DOMA!!

While we are hearing so much about today's court decision and the gay marriage ruling, let's not forget this story:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/us/new-york-doma-windsor/

Victory for lesbian, years after her longtime partner's death

By Greg Botelho, CNN

Updated 12:52 PM ET, Wed June 26, 2013

Edith Windsor, who filed the original case that could upend the Defense of Marriage Act, says just getting the case to this point is a kind of victory.

"We've made a huge step forward and a huge difference in how people look at us," she said. "And so, it'll happen. Another year if not now."

It was the death of Windsor's life partner, Thea Clara Spyer, that led to the case.

Theirs was not a fleeting romance -- the women were together 42 years sharing ups and downs, laughs and tears. They also shared what they'd earned together, including from Windsor's job as a programmer with IBM and Spyer's work as a psychologist.

5 things we learned from day one of oral arguments

Edith Windsor is leading the campaign to erase the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on her suit, which she filed after she had to pay $363,000 in estate taxes after her female partner died because the federal government didn't recognize their marriage.

"We were mildly affluent and extremely happy," Windsor said. "We were like most couples."

But even after they married in 2007 in Toronto, some 40 years into their courtship, the two women were not "like most couples" in the eyes of the state of New York, where they lived, nor in the eyes of the U.S. government, which under the Defense of Marriage Act mandates that a spouse, as legally defined, must be a person of the opposite sex.

This fact hit Windsor hard in 2009, while in a hospital after suffering a heart attack a month after Spyer's death. As she recovered and mourned, Windsor realized she faced a hefty bill for inheritance taxes -- $363,053 more than was warranted, she later claimed in court -- because Spyer was, in legal terms, little more than a friend.

"It was incredible indignation," Windsor recalled feeling. "Just the numbers were so cruel."

This anger gave way to action. Why, she and her lawyers argued, should her relationship with Spyer be any different when it came to rights, taxes and more than a heterosexual couple? Why should Windsor have to pay, literally, for losing her soulmate -- even though, by 2009, New York courts had recognized that "foreign same-sex marriages" should be recognized in the state as valid?

In October, Windsor got an answer in the form of a ruling opinion from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court found, in her favor, that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the Constitution's equal protection clause and thus she shouldn't have had to pay an inheritance tax after her partner's death. This follows a similar ruling, in May, from another federal appeals court in Boston.

Federal appeals court strikes down Defense of Marriage Act

Neither opinion settles the matter for good. That is expected to happen when the Supreme Court will weigh the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act through the prism of Windsor and Spyer's story. It is one of two cases related to same-sex marriage that the high court is considering. The other addresses California's Proposition 8. The court is expected to rule on both cases by mid-June.

Even with those cases pending, Windsor said last fall -- when the lower court decided in her favor, three years after Spyer's death -- that she felt she could finally breathe and celebrate.

It was a day she relished, and one she didn't entirely expect after all her heartache.

"What I'm feeling is elated," Windsor said. "Did I ever think it could come to be, altogether? ... Not a chance in hell."

more on how they met..