In honor of lesbian widow Edie Windsor's case challenging the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which comes before the Supreme Court today, we thought we'd round up some of our favorite lesbian weddings from recent years. The Court won't issue its ruling until this summer, but we dare the justices to try to convince us the ladies highlighted in the following pages aren't married.
Because, really, how can anyone be opposed to this much love, beauty, and equality? We hope the justices are similarly swayed.
Thea Spyer, left, and her wife Edie Windsor, who was ordered to pay more than $300,000 in property taxes when Syper died — taxes Windsor would not have owed if DOMA didn't prevent the federal government from recognizing her marriage. Spyer and Windsor married in Canada in 2007.
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Meet Jenna and Jess, who met at a lesbian bar in New York in 2006 and the rest became history. It was kismet that Jenna and Jess should meet up with the folks at Epic Filmmakers to create what is arguably the most adorable, touching, funny and sweet lesbian wedding video ever.
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Actress and LGBT rights advocate Cynthia Nixon married her partner Christine Marinoni last year in New York. The Sex and the City star Nixon, 46 and Marinoni, 45, began their relationship in 2004 but said they would wait to marry until same-sex marriage became legal in their home state of New York, which happened in the summer of 2011. Both outspoken marriage activists, the couple became engaged at a same-sex marriage rally in New York three years ago.
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Japanese lesbian blogger Koyuki Higashi and her partner Hiroko made history earlier this month when they became the first same-sex couple to wed in Japan — at Tokyo Disney. Higashi tweeted the photo above of her and her new wife in princess-style white wedding gowns, flanked my Mickey and Minnie Mouse. "My love Hiroko and I wore wedding dresses and had a mini-parade at DisneySea, a place I also love," Hagashi tweeted after the ceremony.
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Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin fulfilled a campaign promise in 2011 when he presided over the wedding of a lesbian couple, marking a first for a sitting U.S. governor. Shumlin, a first-term Democrat, pronounced Ann and Michele "Mitch" Beck married at a ceremony in his own office. Ann and Mitch Beck are retired former administrative assistants at the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. Both had been married before, and met in 2002 through personal ads in a newspaper.
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In July of 2011, same-sex couples in New York were finally able to marry — and there was a veritable swarm of loving couples eager to make it official. Among them were Connie Kopelov, 84, and her wife, Phyllis Siegel, 76, shown here as they hold up a marriage certificate and celebrate as they exit the Manhattan City Clerk's office.
Also getting hitched on the first day it was legal in New York were Maira Garcia (right) and Maria Vargas, who waited in line to get married at the Brooklyn City Clerk's office.
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The adorable lesbian couple pictured above, Sarah Perfetti and Abby Henkel, were among more than a dozen LGBT couples to be married in January by the Mayor of Bloomington, Ind., Mark Kruzan. Perfetti, 28, and Henkel, 26, have been together for two years, according to the Indy Star, and if this photo is any proof, they are madly, adorably in love.
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Out singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile married her wife, Catherine Shepard, on September 15, 2012. Carlile and Shepherd tied the knot with a ceremony in Boston, Mass. At the time, Carlile said she was still blown away by the state's marriage equality, and that by signing the marriage license, "I felt like I was breaking a law."
"It was truly one of our best days, completely awkward and human and beautiful," Carlile wrote in a Facebook post accompanying the photo above. "I'm married to my best friend and nothing has ever brought me more joy than that."
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Retired Air Force Major Margaret Witt, a key voice in the fight to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," wed her longtime partner Laurie Johnson during a small ceremony at Grande Ronde Cellars in Spokane, Wash., last December.
The couple was the first to get their marriage license at the Spokane County Courthouse just before 8:30 a.m. on December 6, 2012. Witt's attorney in her successful federal court challenge to her dismissal under DADT, Jim Lobsenz, presided over the ceremony.
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Scottish singer Horse McDonald (right), whom we recently featured in an interview, married her fiancée Alanna in January, in a civil partnership in her hometown of Lanark, a place she fled as a teen due to antigay bullying, according to The Daily Record. The 54-year-old, who released her first album The Same Sky in 1990, was tight-lipped about her nuptials, keeping the happy occasion a secret except for to close family and friends.
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Country singer Chely Wright, who came out as lesbian in 2010, married Lauren Blitzer in an interfaith ceremony in 2011 at Blitzer’s aunt’s home in Connecticut. Wright met Blitzer, an LGBT rights activist, just two weeks after she came out. The ceremony was officiated by both a minister and a rabbi because Wright is Christian and Blitzer is Jewish, People reports. Wright, 40, and Blitzer, 30, both wore white wedding gowns but decided to forgo veils because, Wright told People, "We like our hair too much!"
