It's been a good week for marriage equality—and it's only Wednesday. Freedom To Marry:

This is the 54th court ruling since June 2013 in favor of the freedom to marry. Just four courts - most notably, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit - have upheld marriage discrimination. Plaintiffs from the 6th Circuit cases, out of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, are now seeking review from that out-of-step ruling from the United States Supreme Court.... Freedom to Marry founder and president Evan Wolfson said today:

"Montana’s same-sex couples and their loved ones want what all families want: joy, protections, security, and respect – and that's what the freedom to marry is all about. This ruling, in keeping with nearly every other court that has ruled in more than a year, brings us to 35 states with the freedom to marry — but we are not done until we end marriage discrimination in all 50 states. It’s time for the Supreme Court to affirm the freedom to marry nationwide and bring our country to national resolution for all loving and committed couples in every state."

For years I closed my Slog posts on marriage equality with this: "We're winning." I would tack those two words on at the end of posts even when we lost—when a court decision went against us, when voters approved an(other) anti-gay-marriage amendment. Because even on the worst days, even when the losses were particularly painful, it was clear to me that we were winning the argument. We were losing battles but winning the war. The "winning" arguments made by opponents of marriage equality were just so transparent, so ridiculous, and so appallingly heterophobic (marriage is how we trick irresponsible heterosexuals into taking care of their children!) that I knew they couldn't possibly carry the day.

Slog's resident trolls would erupt every time I ended a Slog post about marriage equality with "We're winning." They LOL'd at my delusions, they sneered at my efforts to buck up supporters of marriage equality, they trolled a little harder. They called me a cockeyedmouthed optimist. That was then. This is now: 35 states, motherfuckers. And, thanks to a "loss" before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit—the only U.S. Court of Appeals decision that hasn't backed marriage equality—we're headed back to the Supreme Court.

We're winning. We were winning then, we're winning now.