When I say they made the country better I mean that in a very specific way. In spite of what some people may think a country is not some vague concept that you can support without supporting any part of it, nor is it simply lines on a map. A country is made up of people. Without people there is no country, no one to value whatever values the country may have, no one to care about the lines on a map, no one to make policy, no one to ... anything really.
A country is a body of people. Making the lives of people in the country better without making anyone else's lives worse is pretty much the best thing you can do for a country. Because the country is the people, so what's good for the people is good for the country. Normally there's some kind of trade off. (E.g. Rich people have to pay a few cents more per dollar earned over 100 million so we can have an infrastructure and that would make them suffer so much.) But sometimes there isn't really.
Rights is one of those things. The Supreme Court doesn't grant people rights. People already have the rights. They're just getting trampled on. When the Supreme Court makes a ruling such as the one on marriage equality, it's not changing anything in theory, it's instead changing things in practice. In theory the rights were already guaranteed to everyone by the constitution, in practice certain groups weren't having their rights respected and needed the court to say that they really truly had those rights in order to change that.
The ruling, as all rulings of this nature, says, "These people are people to and thus deserve (and in fact have) the same rights as other people," and what is notable about that kind of ruling is that no one loses. The "other people" still have the same rights they had before. The group of people not treated like shit is simply expanded to include "These people" while the group of people treated like shit gets no new inductees.
So, where does the title of the post come from?
Love Wins was a book by an evangelical pastor named Rob Bell in 2011 that made serious waves before anyone even read it because, based on the combination of the title and subtitle it was assumed that he would say that it might, conceivably, be possible that no one is going to Hell. That love would triumph over hate, good over evil, and thus no one would have to needlessly suffer.
"Love Wins" also seems to be the way that people are describing the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality. As near as I can tell it was actually equal protection under the law and, perhaps, the impulse to not be a complete asshole that won the case, which is somewhat less fun of a slogan.
Though, that said, Love did win, even if it won based on things that don't actually involve love directly. Treating people as people while affording them dignity and respect is necessary to love, but it's not sufficient.
But quibbling over wording isn't my point here. News from the inkverse.
It may have become apparent to people that I've taken an interest in the game Splatoon.
Now, what should happen when I took a look about this game where teenage squid-people compete in a sport that involves covering the ground in ink while engaging in a certain degree of interpersonal ink-combat?
Clemente: *illustration built around the words "Love Wins"*
Brottom: *illustration of the cat who announces the results of matches saying, "Love Wins"*
Bret: *Illustration with "#LoveWins"*
Igel: *illustration of octopus-woman and squid-woman snuggling #LoveWins*
Patrick~: *illistruation of two squid meeting at a heart "Love Wins!"*
Dinosauric: *another squid-woman with octo-woman illustration "Love Wins"*
Samantha: "#lovewins" (The o in "love" and the dot of the "i" in "wins" are both hearts. Other hearts thrown in for good measure.)
kirstin: IM SO HAPPY THERES SO MANY MARRIAGE EQUALITY POSTS #lovewins yayyy
That was the majority of the handful of messages shown to me from players. There were a couple of normal game related messages, but only a couple.
There was one dissenting opinion, far nicer than another dissenting opinion that might be in some people's minds today:
Enkou: Forget gay marriage, there's turf to ink.
If it were the case that one had to decide between working on the slow, slow, agonizingly slow, slow, so damn slow sometimes I lose all hope, slow, slow progress toward living in a world where all people are treated like people on the one hand and playing a silly, fun game with squid people on the other, then I think you'd have to forget Splatoon and focus on the other thing.
But here's the nice thing: You don't have to choose. It's totally possible play games and care about human beings not being treated like garbage. And it's possible to shoot virtual ink at virtual turf while being happy that there has been some forward progress* in that arena.
Anyway, the squid-people approve of the Supreme Court mandating that governments in the US be slightly less assholic because the level of assholicness they had in place before this ruling was actually illegal (unconstitutional even, which is the worst form of illegal possible in the US.)
It makes a certain amount of sense that the squids would do so given that today I also saw that Cthulhu has dropped out of the race for US President citing that he wasn't evil enough for the party whose nomination he was seeking. (Here's a hint, it's the one that thinks this ruling is a bad one.)
[Added:] And, of course, going back after writing this post has an entirely different (and rather larger) group of squid. The vast majority also saying, "Love Wins." Squid like equality, it would seem. [/Added]
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* That's actually redundant, the "pro" in "progress" means forward anyway. If you're wondering, the "gress" is to walk. We're stepping forward. A lot of steps left to go, but we're stepping forward.
Fun fact: "gradual progress", based on etymology, would translate to "walking-like walking forward". "Progress" being the "walking forward", "gradual" being the "walking like" In spite of how different "gress" and "gradu-" look, they're actually forms of the same root word.
In "progress" the emphasis is on the motion of the walking, in "gradual" it's on the speed (walk, not run; one step at a time, not leaps and bounds.)
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