On That Selfie Stick Gay Marriage Photo by Marcus Yam

If you’ve been anywhere close to social media the last few days, you know the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision birthed an explosion of visuals, not to mention, new marriages. To try and call out one picture is frankly presumptuous. Still, I was powerfully drawn to this photo by LA Times photographer Marcus Yam. (Mindful of the paradigm shift, I also appreciated his personal portraits on Facebook.)

There are many things this photo embodies – on top of the pure joy and the emotional rush of history being made. One thing it says with the selfie stick is that the times, and with them, our cultural rituals and practices, keep evolving and refashioning themselves. In its celebration of youth (and pop culture), what the photo also illustrates is how much the resistance to gay marriage was ultimately crushed by demographics. Up until Friday, the opposition might have been couched in ideology and theology, but there was just no way to recover from obsolescence.

(photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/TNS. caption: Natalie Novoa, left, and Eddie Daniels take a selfie while waiting to get married at the L.A. County Registrar office in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Friday, June 26, 2015. The couple have been together for the past 11 years and have been waiting to wed this auspicious day in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage.)