Newly out on DVD, Donna Zaccaro's documentary "To a More Perfect Union: U.S. v. Windsor" is a short, succinct explanation of the legal battle fought by Edie Windsor, a lesbian in her 80s who refused to let the US government invalidate her relationship. Windsor and Thea Spyer married in Canada, and were together for 40 years. When Spyer died after a long illness, Windsor was hit with an estate tax bill totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a bill she would not have had to pay were her marriage recognized by the federal government. She decided to sue.
Zaccaro assumes that many younger viewers might not know the history of the gay rights movement in the US, so she opens her film with a brief look back at how LGBT people were treated by society during the 1950s and 60s. Police raids of gay bars had been the norm. A cringe-inducing clip from a 1967 CBS News special, "The Homosexuals," reminds viewers how negatively society viewed LGBT people then. Zaccaro also recalls the formation of the Mattachine Society, an organization of gay men, and the Daughters of Bilitis, a San Francisco-based lesbian group, the first gay organizations in the country. LGBTs fought back in 1969 when the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York. The riots that ensued birthed the modern gay rights movement and launched the first Pride parades. Zaccaro packs all this into the film's first 10 minutes.
The film also recounts the history of the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton when it looked like Hawaii was going to pass the country's first marriage equality bill. Lawmakers were afraid other states would be forced to honor Hawaiian marriages. Windsor's suit challenged part of that law, and demanded full recognition of her marriage to Spyer.
The bulk of the film focuses on Windsor's relationship with Spyer and her subsequent legal battle. Interviewees include Windsor and her attorney Roberta Kaplan, who wisely avoids using complicated legal jargon in her interviews, which makes the details of the case accessible to the average viewer. Viewers will learn what Windsor had to go through in order to get her case heard in the US Supreme Court, no mean feat, made all the more impressive by her advanced age and the fact that she was suffering from health problems. But she persevered, and her case made it to the high court, attracting national attention along the way.
Though the outcome of the case is well-known (Windsor won), Kaplan's oral arguments before the court and arguments from the opposing side play out like a suspense drama. Ultimately, Windsor not only won her case, she paved the way for the establishment of full marriage-equality rights at the federal level two years later. Now that she is no longer with us, "To a More Perfect Union" stands as a tribute to her strength and her extraordinary accomplishment. The film paints a portrait of her as a hero, rightfully so.