The motto for INVITATION TO DANCE is: Equality, justice and a place on the dance floor!
While there are no laws that we know of specifically banning disabled people from dancing, we know that the unspoken prohibitions against disabled people shaking their tail feathers in public have a similarly constraining effect.
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| Edie left, seated, facing us, in white wedding gown, Thea, sitting in wheelchair, with top hat on and sign saying "Just Married" on back of chair. |
Similar injunctions surely put limits on Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer dancing together in public outside of the “safe” lesbian bars in the West Village. That was where they first met in the mid 60’s and danced that first night until Windsor wore a hole in her stocking. Windsor is the central figure in the Supreme Court case that could strike down The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the law forbidding federal recognition of gay marriage. The world watched as Edie told reporters of her 40-year relationship with her partner Thea, and the magic moment in 2007 when they were married in Toronto, two years before Thea died.
In multiple news stories the public heard of
their loving relationship, and about how much they loved to dance. To celebrate
their fifteenth anniversary, Windsor and Spyer hosted a party for about 100
people. Spyer, diagnosed with MS three years earlier, was on crutches and joined
Windsor on the dance floor. Edie, quoted in NY
Magazine, said: “Even when she was in a wheelchair, she’d dance from the
chair.”
We salute Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer for their
marriage, their activism and their dancing. Let’s all work together to integrate those dance floors, and
defy anyone who would put a stop to such gloriousness!
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| Thea, left, using crutches, with Edie, both standing near a swimming pool and smiling. |
