‘Drunk History’ toasts to Philly marriage-equality pioneer Edith Windsor
Windsor already left a mark on the nation’s history after toppling the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, but this winter, her story will be part of a much boozier legacy.
Philadelphia native and same-sex marriage pioneer Edith “Edie” Windsor has already left a mark on the nation’s history by toppling the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, but this winter, her story will be part of a much boozier legacy.
In a trailer for the upcoming season of Comedy Central’s “Drunk History,” actresses Alison Brie and Sugar Lyn Beard play Windsor and her wife, Thea Spyer, retelling a liquored-up version of the couple’s fight for LGBTQ rights, and Windsor’s subsequent Supreme Court victory in the fight for marriage equality.
The new, 14-episode season premieres Tuesday, Jan. 15, and will also feature inebriated iterations of the start of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the first black students to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1957, and the development of the Ethnic Studies Program at University of California, Berkeley.
Dubbed the “Matriarch of the Gay-Rights Movement,” Windsor sued the federal government in 2009, claiming that she would not have been left with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes after her wife’s death had she been in a heterosexual marriage.
Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, and granting the nation’s same-sex couples the same government recognition and benefits as opposite-sex partners.
The decision paved the way for the Supreme Court’s nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015.
Details are scant on what the “Drunk History” retelling of Windsor’s story entails, but this will not be the first time the country has toasted her accomplishments.
Windsor was honored by President Barack Obama at the White House in 2014 and was a runner-up for Time Magazine’s 2013 “Person of the Year.”
In Philadelphia, then-Mayor Michael Nutter recognized the city’s “Edie Windsor Day,” and she received accolades from Temple University — her alma mater — for her activism.
Earlier this year, a block on the corner of Locust and South 13th Streets in the city’s Gayborhood was also renamed “Edie Windsor Way” in her honor.
After Windsor died in 2016 at the age of 88, Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called her “one of the country’s great civil rights pioneers.”
We’ll drink to that.