LGBTQ pioneer Connie Kurtz dies at 83
With partner, later wife, she fought for marriage equality.
Perhaps Connie Kurtz’s most revolutionary act was the most simple: Just to love, who and how she wanted. And in that quiet revolution, she helped firmly illuminate the right of herself and others to do the same.
“There is nobody else I could imagine sharing this life with,” says Ruthie Berman, whose 44-year romance and eventual marriage to Kurtz was the basis for a lifetime of advocates in the LGBTQ community and for marriage equality.
The couple were fixtures at West Palm Beach’s Century Village and even the subjects of an award-winning 2002 documentary “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room In the House.”
Kurtz, 83, died Sunday evening after a fight with cancer.
“Connie and I have been through it all and she has remained my fulfilled love,” says Berman, who with her then-partner, now wife, sued the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits, which were won in 1994.
“Aside from the fact that they are pioneers, the fact is that this is a classic love story that transcended the prejudices and idiosyncrasies of their own time to be able to move us forward — something no one else could do,” says Meredith Ockman, board member of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council and a friend of the couple for decades. “Every success we have had in the community rests on the shoulders of these women. They have affected everyone in life, whether they knew it or not.”
In 2007, Kurtz and Berman told The Palm Beach Post’s Anne Rodgers about their long, fortuitous journey from neighborhood moms with husbands in late-1950s New York to partners in a giddy, enduring love story. Kurtz, her husband and her chil- dren had moved to Israel, and “Geraldo.”
“When you see them on the ‘Donahue’ show, there’s no question who they are,” says Ockman, who first met the couple through Compass, Lake Worth’s LGBTQ community center. “There were no qualms about it, never a hesitation, because hesitation of insecurity, that would have stopped someone else. But it never stopped them.”
They won that fight, and but she discovered during that right for all New York City a visit home in 1974 that her employees, in 1994. Through feelings for her old friend, their lives, they told The Post, Ruthie, had changed. they became increasingly
“Ruthie asked me to kiss emboldened in their love her, and I did, but I was ner- and in their place in society. vous,” she said in that inter- “People tell me it could have view. “And she said, ‘Can’t been different if I had met the you do better than that?’ So right man,” Kurtz said at the then I really kissed her! ... time. “But I’m telling you I I deserve more than your met the right person. I owed shame and embarrassment. it to myself more than anyI’m morethan out and proud. one to be my authentic self.” When I whisper, you can hear Kurtz and Berman marme a block away. You can’t ried in 2011 in New York, stay in the closet and be shortly after marriage equalhealthy. You can not.” ity became law.
The couple left their marKurtz is survived by her riages and risked losing cus- wife Ruthie, daughter Eileen tody of their children, while Ben-Orr and her husband gaining community and Yoav; son Moishi Kurtz and employment scrutiny. But his wife Rachel; son-in-law their fight to be together, be Michael Berman and wife recognized as legal partners Sarah; daughter-in-law Lynne for themselves and others, and her husband Dani Voutsaw them suing the school sinas; along with 14 children board in 1988, discussing and 27 great-grandchildren. their cause on national television shows like “Donahue”