This week: a gay rights pioneer and the man who helped build the Yves Saint Laurent empire

THE activist Edith Windsor, who has died aged 88, was a gay rights pioneer who brought a landmark case to the US Supreme Court that paved a path towards legalising same-sex marriage nationwide.

Windsor became a campaigner after her first spouse, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. The women had married legally in Canada in 2007 after spending more than 40 years together.

At 81, Windsor sued the federal government, saying its definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman prevented her from getting a marital deduction on Spyer's estate. That meant she faced a huge tax bill that heterosexual couples would not have.

"She refused to accept the injustice levelled at the love of her life," US House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.

The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June 2013 that the provision in the federal Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional, and that legally married same-sex couples are entitled to the same federal benefits that heterosexual couples receive.

The opinion gave the nation's legally married gay couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans and marked a key moment of encouragement for gay marriage supporters confronting the nationwide patchwork of laws that, at the time, outlawed such unions in roughly three dozen states.

Ultimately, the opinion in Windsor's case became the basis for a wave of federal court rulings that struck down state marriage bans and led to a 2015 Supreme Court ruling giving same-sex couples the right to marry from coast to coast.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called Windsor one of this country's great civil rights pioneers.

"One simply cannot write the history of the gay rights movement without reserving immense credit and gratitude for Edie Windsor," Mr Romero said.

Windsor was a finalist for Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2013 (Pope Francis ultimately got the honour) and was invited the next year to a state dinner at the White House, honouring then-French president Francois Hollande.

Windsor was born in Philadelphia and moved to Manhattan in the early 1950s after a brief marriage to a man that ended after she told him she was gay.

She received a master's degree in mathematics from New York University in 1957 and went to work for IBM in senior technical and management positions.

Spyer came into her life in 1963, and they became a couple two years later. In court documents, Windsor said she told Spyer, "'If it still feels this goofy joyous, I'd like us to spend the rest of our lives together.' And we did."

Concerned that an engagement ring would bring unwanted attention to Windsor's sexual orientation from colleagues at IBM, Spyer gave Windsor a diamond brooch.

"Our choice not to wear traditional engagement rings was just one of many ways in which Thea and I had to mould our lives to make our relationship invisible," Windsor said in court documents.

"We both faced pressures not only in the workplace and in society at large, but also from family and friends," she added. "Like countless other same-sex couples, we engaged in a constant struggle to balance our love for one another and our desire to live openly and with dignity, on the one hand, with our fear of disapproval and discrimination from others on the other."

Spyer was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1977, and her physical condition deteriorated over the decades. The women married in Canada when they realised they might not be living when New York state legalised same-sex marriage, which it did in 2011.

Windsor also had health problems for years. After Spyer's death in 2009, she had an attack of stress cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome, that was so bad that her heart stopped.

THE influential French businessman and philanthropist Pierre Berge, who has died aged 86, was one of France's leading art patrons as well as a chief executive of Yves Saint Laurent, where he helped build the company into a huge fashion empire.

A cultural celebrity in France in his own right, Berge also presided over the board of Le Monde newspaper, among his many media investments.

However, he was best known for helping his long-time lover Saint Laurent found his own fashion house in 1961 after leaving Christian Dior.

What came next was a sartorial revolution, as Saint Laurent's trouser suits and styles changed the way generations of women dressed.

Berge, a regular presence at Saint Laurent fashion shows and seen as the business brains behind the empire, directed the house until 2002. He had been planning to inaugurate an Yves Saint Laurent museum in Paris next month and another in Morocco.

Born on November 14 1930, on Ile d'Oleron island, Berge later moved to Paris, where he moved in literary circles including Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

A lifelong left-wing activist, he used his prominence to push for gay rights, including France's legalisation of gay marriage in 2013, and also founded the Aids research foundation Sidaction.

Berge headed the Paris Opera and a Paris theatre, and financed purchases of works for the Louvre museum and renovations of two rooms at the National Gallery of London.

He was made officer in the Legion of Honour for his contributions to France.

He and Saint Laurent built up a huge art collection and properties including the renowned Majorelle Gardens in Marrakech, where Saint Laurent was buried after his death in 2008, and where Berge opened a museum celebrating Berber culture.