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One year after the Supreme Court ruling, this comic shows that love is love is love.

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Modern Love

June 26, 2016, is a big day. It marks the one-year anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.

On that day in 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ended the marriage equality ban across all 50 states. This was thanks to the work of LGBTQ activists, everyday people, and politicians pushing for equal rights for the LGBTQ community.

Illustrator Carol Lay created a comic to celebrate marriage equality this year, and she looked to same-sex couples in her own life first.

She wanted to show how they dealt with anti-LGBTQ legislation before 2015.


"My oldest friend from college married her spouse when it first became legal in California," Lay told Upworthy in an email.

"There was that six-month window before [people] shut it down by pouring money into Proposition 8. The other female couple I know were in Arkansas, and couldn’t marry until last year; one [of the women] just died."

Lay wanted to show that implementing marriage equality in law wasn’t just a ceremonial marker.

Legalizing same-sex marriage meant that same-sex couples could enjoy federal and state benefits, such as receiving bigger checks from Social Security, jointly filing taxes, and being able to see a sick partner in the hospital.

And while the Supreme Court decision began a new era in our country’s treatment of gay couples, Lay wanted to show that the fight for equality is far from over.

Transgender homicide rates are on the rise, Congress has blocked bills that would protect LGBTQ employees from discriminatory practices at work, and the recent massacre in Orlando broke many hearts. These are all unfortunate signs that we still have a lot of work to do.

"This story started in script stage as a love story to celebrate a year of legalized marriage throughout the U.S.," said Lay. "The atrocity in Orlando occurred during the editing stage and demanded a sad note that the struggle isn’t over. Backward states using fear or cries of religious liberty to discriminate against anyone in the LGBT community is disheartening and scary, a clear example of how progress is often two steps forward and one back."

But as Lin Manuel-Miranda said, "Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love."

When we put work behind the belief that love can defeat hate, we have the power to create a greater world that we can all enjoy.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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A nasty note gets a strong response.

We've all seen it while cruising for spots in a busy parking lot: A person parks their whip in a disabled spot, then they walk out of their car and look totally fine. It's enough to make you want to vomit out of anger, especially because you've been driving around for what feels like a million years trying to find a parking spot.

You're obviously not going to confront them about it because that's all sorts of uncomfortable, so you think of a better, way less ballsy approach: leaving a passive aggressive note on their car's windshield.

Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

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Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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Health

8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

"The most difficult part of my illness wasn't losing my hair, or being erroneously called 'sir' by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it."

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

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Health

This woman's powerful 'before and after' photos crush myths about body positivity

"Body positivity is about saying that you are more than a body and your self-worth is not reliant on your beauty."



Michelle Elman, a body positivity coach, helps people who are struggling to find confidence in their own skin.

After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

Sharing her own journey has been one of her most effective teaching tools.

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via wakaflockafloccar / TikTok

It's amazing to consider just how quickly the world has changed over the past 11 months. If you were to have told someone in February 2020 that the entire country would be on some form of lockdown, nearly everyone would be wearing a mask, and half a million people were going to die due to a virus, no one would have believed you.

Yet, here we are.

PPE masks were the last thing on Leah Holland of Georgetown, Kentucky's mind on March 4, 2020, when she got a tattoo inspired by the words of a close friend.

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