A Historic Verdict

In 2009, a woman named Thea Spyer died in New York. Two years prior, she had married the love of her life, a woman named Edith Windsor, in Canada. Thea left her estate to her partner, but when Edith tried to reclaim it, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service argued that the Defense of Marriage Act only grants legal marital status to heterosexual couples and made her pay $363,000. Windsor brought the case to the Supreme Court, which has just pronounced a historic verdict, declaring the article in question unconstitutional, legally recognizing marriage between two people of the same sex and identifying Edith as Thea’s conjugal inheritor.

The reasoning that was passed by a majority in the court was simple and forceful: The “avowed purpose and practical effect of [DOMA] are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the states.” The argument has ramifications beyond the context of U.S. federal law and should provide food for thought in other societies facing the question of whether to legalize gay marriage.

One example is Colombia, where a powerful ultraconservative lobby, led by the attorney Alejandro Ordóñez, is trying to deny homosexual couples this right and keep them legally segregated. This is a similar type of discrimination to that practiced elsewhere for racial or religious reasons. Just like its American counterpart, the Colombian Constitution holds the equality of citizens sacred. The idea that gay people are less equal than the rest is nowhere to be seen in our Magna Carta. The U.S. Supreme Court’s verdict represents a milestone for gay marriage and for the right of free, adult citizens to live their own private lives with the full protection of the law.

Just as has been the case with other topics — women’s rights, abortion, compulsory military service, etc. — Washington’s decision will have many different repercussions. For now, however, one of the first people in New York to benefit from the verdict was a Colombian by the name of Steven Infante. Because he is now the legal spouse of an American, he cannot be deported.