Free Republic

Gay rights activist Edith Windsor, whose same-sex marriage fight led to a landmark US ruling, has died aged 88. Her death was confirmed to the New York Times by her wife Judith Kasen-Windsor. Ms Windsor's Supreme Court case struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, granting same-sex married couples federal recognition for the first time. She had sued the US government after being ordered to pay $363,053 (£224,940) in federal estate tax after her previous wife died. The couple had been partners for 44 years and had married in Canada in 2007. Ms Windsor argued that the provision...

NEW YORK (TheBlaze/AP) — Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker’s far better half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV’s groundbreaking 1970s comedy “All in the Family,” has died. She was 90. Stapleton died Friday of natural causes at her New York City home surrounded by friends and family, her children said Saturday. Little known to the public before “All In the Family,” she co-starred with Carroll O’Connor in the top-rated CBS sitcom about an unrepentant bigot, the wife he churlishly but fondly called “Dingbat,” their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and liberal son-in-law Mike, aka Meathead (Rob...

Jean Stapleton, an actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive — up to a point — housewife on the groundbreaking series “All in the Family” made her, along with Mary Tyler Moore and Bea Arthur, one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s, died Friday at her home in New York City. She was 90.