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Rachel Maddow ended her Friday show by celebrating what she called a historic week in the gay rights movement in America.
In a poetic monologue that seemed at times to leave her slightly choked up, Maddow compared the effect of the work done by pioneers in the fight for LGBT equality -- from now-dead activists of the 1970s to Edie Windsor, the widow of Thea Spyer, whose lawsuit against the Defense of Marriage Act was heard by the Supreme Court this week -- to the light that reaches the night sky from stars that have actually been gone for years.
"There are all sorts of people and all sorts of fights that technically are not still around," she said. "But they live, and we can see them. We can see their light in some of the biggest-deal and most difficult things that we do today. Whether or not you see equal rights for gay people as your particular fight -- whether or not you even agree with that particular fight--this was a really big historic week for that fight, and therefore for our country. All the work, all the generations of work to get here, in fact, got us here. It worked."
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Spyer was Windsor's widow; it is the reverse.
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