• REFRAMING MARRIAGE EQUALITY AS DEATH EQUALITY

    Author(s):
    Michelle Martin-Baron
    Editor(s):
    Kreg Abshire (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Subject(s):
    Culture--Study and teaching, United States, Americans--Social life and customs, Culture and law, Gays
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    American cultural studies, American culture, Law and culture, Queer/gay
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6HQ3RZ19
    Abstract:
    A provocation: what would it mean to reframe the marriage movement as a crusade for death rights and death equality? Even though weddings are the performative centerpiece of the activism that successfully challenged the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the ground-breaking case of Windsor vs. The United States (2013) is one about death rights. When Edie Windsor's partner of over forty years, Thea Spyer, passed away, Windsor found herself in a precarious position; Spyer had left Windsor her estate, but was not considered to be a "surviving spouse," the term spouse referring "only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife" under DOMA.[1] These legal restrictions famously cost Windsor $300,000 more in inheritance taxes than she would have been charged if she and Spyer had been in a heterosexual marriage. In other words, the "price" of being LGBT in the United States had a concrete figure, which Spyer's attorneys used to make their case.[2]
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Publisher:
    Rocky Mountain American Studies Association
    Pub. Date:
    November 2016
    Journal:
    Quarterly Horse: A Journal of [brief] American Studies
    Volume:
    1
    Issue:
    1
    ISSN:
    2470-6191
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial

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