LGBT Cancer Film Oscar Win

Cynthia Wade won the 2008 Oscar  for her short documentary Freeheld, about the 2006 struggle of New Jersey police officer Laurel Hester’s struggle to transfer her pension to her domestic partner during the final months of her life.

Hester, who worked as a detective  for 25 years, took on the locally elected Ocean County Freeholders as she battled cancer to give the financial security of her pension to her partner, Stacie Andree, a right automatically afforded to married heterosexual spouses.