Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz

Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz are a lesbian couple who successfully sued the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits (Ruthie was a health and physical education teacher at a Brooklyn high school), winning such benefits for all New York City employees. Ruthie was born in 1934 and Connie was born in 1936; they met in Brooklyn in the late 1950s and became friends. Both were married to men and had children at the time. Connie moved to Israel with her family in 1970, and when she returned to visit America in 1974, she and Ruthie fell in love. They divorced their husbands and became a couple. Ruthie and Connie sued the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits in 1988, eventually winning in 1994. Ruthie and Connie went on the talk shows Donahue and Geraldo to talk about the case, and came out of the closet on Donahue in 1988. They also founded The Answer is Loving Counseling Center (they are both certified counselors) and worked there for over twenty years. Ruthie and Connie have started branches of Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in Florida and New York, and in 2000, they began serving as co-chairs of the New York State NOW Lesbian Rights Task Force. In 2002 a documentary titled "Ruthie and Connie" was made about their lives, directed by Deborah Dickson. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2002, and won six best documentary awards within a year. The Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz Papers are held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.

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