LGBT+ History Month

To recognise and celebrate LGBT+ History Month, Lower, Middle and Upper School pupils heard about the story of courage, love and commitment of LGBT activist, Edie Windsor, in their assemblies this week.

Born in the 1920’s, pupils heard Edie’s story and background growing up in New York at a time when imprisonment was the punishment for being gay. In 1963 she met Thea Spyer, and in 1967 the couple got engaged, though by law, they were not allowed to marry.

Pupils heard Edie’s remarkable story of courage - from hiding her sexuality at work to avoid discrimination to, more than 40 years after getting engaged, going to Canada to marry because the Defence of Marriage Act, which was a law signed in by President Bill Clinton in 1996, banning same-sex marriage by limiting the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, prevented them from marrying at home.

They heard how, two years later, Thea sadly passed away and Edie, now in her 80s became an unlikely civil activist. Shortly after Thea died, Edie had received a letter from the US government saying that under US law, her marriage was illegitimate because Thea wasn’t a man. Consequently, she was liable to pay £363,000 in inheritance tax - a tax she that she would not have paid if Thea had been a man.

Pupils heard about Edie’s amazing courage taking legal action against the Federal government in a case known as the United States versus Windsor. She won at the district court, then the circuit court and, finally, the Supreme Court, which resulted in the Defence of Marriage Act being repealed. Two years later, the Supreme court ruled that no US state could exclude same-sex couples from the right to marry.

It was a fascinating series of assemblies in which pupils gained a greater understanding of LGBT+ history.

LGBT+ History Month runs throughout February each year across the UK. Find out more online here at stay posted for more activities at Alleyn’s, organised by pupils in the Alleyn’s LGBTQ+ Society.