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Infographic: How Gay Marriage Finally Won In The U.S. Supreme Court

A 10-year timeline of the court battles and cultural moments that made same-sex marriage a reality

By Katie Wudel,
Katie Wudel
Katie Wudel is deputy editor of GOOD and Upworthy, having previously served as GOOD's features editor.
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Eric Sasson
Eric Sasson
Eric Sasson writes “Ctrl-Alt,” Speakeasy’s column on alternative culture. He is the author of Margins of Tolerance and the forthcoming novel “Admissions.” You can follow him on Twitter @idazlei or visit his website here.
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Sep 22, 2016

Rallying against same-sex unions used to be a mandatory battle cry for politicians. Today, gay marriage isn’t just legal in all 50 states, it’s normal. How did we reach mass acceptance in 10 years? Here, we’ve mapped out the series of lawsuits and referendums that took place alongside concerted efforts to reframe gay people everywhere—from soldiers to beloved celebrities—as ordinary Americans who deserve basic human rights.

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A dad on Reddit shared an experience he had in a thread on r/daddit. What happened to him is something that has become a growing trend in recent years. He was showing a picture of his seven-month-old son to a person. She asked the question that many older fathers dread: “Are you his grandpa?”

Fellow older dads empathized with the father, as many of them were also asked that question at one point or another in their life in fatherhood. One would think that fatherhood itself would cause enough stress to induce a few premature gray hairs and wrinkles, but not enough to jump past a whole generation. Many of the older dads offered their takes on how to respond to the “Are you their grandpa?” query.

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“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but that talk don’t bother me,” Jackie Shane sang on her 1963 cover single “Sticks and Stones.” In some ways, the words would define aspects of Shane’s life as she became an early transgender R&B icon. By the time she had over a decade of music industry prowess under her belt, however, she mysteriously disappeared from the public eye in 1971.

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Research finds that what we dream about depends on where we live

A recent study shows that people who daydream while they're awake tend to have better recall of their sleeping dreams. In the article, "Why Some People Remember Their Dreams (and Others Don’t)" on Studyfinds.org, the author shares that research conducted at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca reveals the three main factors that predict how strong dream recall will be: "A person’s general attitude toward dreaming, their tendency to let their mind wander during waking hours, and their typical sleep patterns."

Dreaming has always been an intriguing subject. Nearly every night, when most of us go to sleep, our minds just make us little movies and then push play. There are seemingly no editors. Why do we dream? How do we dream? Obviously, biochemically, we're cycling through REM/deep sleep, and neurons are firing. But how often do we think about the fact that our surroundings affect our dreams?

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Childhood sweethearts finding their way back to each other after decades apart sounds like something out of a fairytale, but sometimes, real life has plans even more poetic. That seemed to be the case for Lauren and Brooks, who went their separate ways in February 2015. But during a flight to Oklahoma, Brooks felt a shift—he realized that Lauren was truly the love of his life and decided he was going to marry her.

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