History!

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

We're on the Way to Being Acknowledged as Human!

What will I be in the position to do when I'm in my mid-80s? By that time, in 40 years, I hope people will be talking about the inability for two people of the same gender to marry the way we talk about interracial marriage today. Same-sex couples will still be a bit exotic, but no one will question that they can marry. I interpret marriage as a basic human right and to have a number of people still suggesting that marriage is not my entitlement says to me that they do not see me as human.

Today, with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to consider the case of Edie Windsor, who spent more than a decade at IBM, and who's Jewish and lesbian and around my mom's age -- and for all of those reasons, I relate to her especially -- makes Edie at the vanguard of the human rights movement. And I'm sure that instead of being in that role, she'd rather simply have her wife still with her, and to be going about their lives, but in the absence of that possibility, she has channeled heart-break and loss into heroism. God bless Edie Windsor.