Ben & Jerry's Renames Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough "I Dough, I Dough"

In support of yesterdays Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, Ben & Jerry’s is renaming one of their most popular ice cream flavors.

For the rest of the summer, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough will be named I Dough, I Dough at participating Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops. From their website:

Across the country and around the globe, the movement for marriage equality is on an unstoppable roll, generating history-making victories, game-changing wins and growing waves of public support for legalizing same-sex marriage everywhere.

With this ruling, the SCOTUS recognizes the bond of love and commitment between two people, and protects the fundamental rights and freedoms that come with it.

They’re deciding to be much classier about this whole thing than I am; there’s not even a single “SUCK IT, CONSERVATIVES” sprinkled in there.

The interesting thing is this couldn’t have been a snap decision; considering how quickly Ben & Jerry’s was on the ball with this, they had to have been planning it for a while. This underpins something that, in the understandable rush to joy and celebration, hasn’t really been addressed much: the fact that it was, essentially, a foregone conclusion. We can and should celebrate the ruling (and the conservative freakout; oh, God, the glorious conservative freakout*), but we also have to acknowledge that it was in no way a surprise. If you were shocked by the Obergefell’s outcome, you haven’t been paying attention.

For most companies, I’d probably see something like this as trying to make a PR move. Having seen the way Ben & Jerry’s actually operates from the inside, though, I can say with confidence that the company legitimately believes in this and all of its political aims (the Save Our Swirled campaign is no shill move, either; they really, really care about reducing methane emissions and combating climate change**). I know it’s generally a good plan to be cynical as hell about any business that reaches the size of Ben & Jerry’s, but in this case, an exception has to be made. They’re a really, really difficult company to dislike.

* This was the only part of this whole thing that actually shocked me; not that conservatives got all huffy about the decision, but that many of them seemed legitimately surprised by it. Have…have you guys been living in this country for the past 10 years? A broken weathervane could tell which way the wind was blowing on this one.

Also, here’s the best tweet about the ruling:

** Full disclosure: they sent me a couple pints of it the day it released. Despite the fact that I’ve been begging for a raspberry flavor for years, it was just OK, because stupid marshmallow swirls ruin everything.