Following the historic Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, the Raygun T-shirt company decided to capture all the sentiments in one sassy message: "American is now finally as gay as Iowa."
Des Moines, Iowa-based Raygun first started printing shirts with the "as gay as" slogan after Iowa legalized same-sex marriage in 2009. In just a few years, the company has seen legalization spread from a few states to the entire country, as of June 26, 2015.
"Our first 'as gay as' shirt was actually back in 2009, when Iowa’s Supreme Court (unanimously) legalized gay marriage," Raygun creator Mike Draper told The Huffington Post. "We made a shirt with the date that said, 'Iowa is now FINALLY as gay as Connecticut.' At the time, only Massachusetts and Connecticut were states with legal gay marriage. We figured we were as gay as Connecticut, but not as gay as Massachusetts (they had Mitt Romney)."
After multiple states made gay marriage legal, Raygun made a few more variations of the shirt, but Draper said they decided "we'll just wait until it was legal in the whole country or Alabama."
Draper said Raygun usually sell about 70 "as gay as" shirts a year, but the new “America is now FINALLY as gay as Iowa” shirt has been purchased more than 1,700 times in two days.
Draper says that he'll continue making shirts about issues he supports, but says Raygun may retire the "as gay as" franchise for now.
"Well, we’d dust it off if Iran, Uganda or North Korea legalized gay marriage," said Draper. "'Iran is now finally as gay as Iowa,' man, that’d be day."
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