I'm a little late on posting this, sorry. It's very exciting that "Freeheld," about the 2006 struggle of New Jersey police officer Laurel Hester's struggle to transfer her pension to her domestic partner, Stacie Andree, during the final months of her life, won the Oscar last night for best documentary short. With less than six months to live as cancer spread to her brain, Hester battled the Ocean County Freeholders, the locally elected officials, to give to Stacie the security for her partner that married couples receive automatically. The film captures both the very public and urgent dispute with the Freeholders, as well as the couple’s intensely private struggle as they come to terms with Hester’s terminal illness.

"It was Lt. Laurel Hester's dying wish that her fight against discrimination would make a difference for all the same-sex couples across the country that face discrimination every single day -- discrimination that I don't face as a married a woman," Cynthia Wade, who directed the film, said during her emotional acceptance speech. Wade also thanked her husband for taking care of their children and holding down a full-time job while she worked on the film.

Producer Vanessa Roth added, "And to all our supporters and our families who believed that even a 38-minute movie could change minds and lives, and to our children who remind us what's really important. And to Stacie, who is here tonight, who's really an auto mechanic by day but a hero in life and always did what was right."