John Oliver Celebrates 10 Years of Marriage Equality With Gay Nintendo

10 years ago this May, Massachusetts broke ground as the first state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. Since then, 16 states have followed suit and additional handful of states now offer civil unions or domestic partnerships for same sex couples. We’re making progress, but there’s still a long way to go.

LGBTQ people continue to struggle for equality (33 states still ban same sex marriage) and equal representation in most areas of public life — and virtual life, too, as it turns out. A social media campaign was recently launched against Nintendo over their new game Tomodachi Life, which allows characters to couple off and get married, but only if the avatars are of opposite genders.

Nintendo quickly responded to protests and promised to be more inclusive in the future editions of the game. Sure, it’s just lip service at this point, but the gay couples of the video game world are still very, very excited. (So happy for Mario and Link. I hear they’re already registered at the gold coin and pointy hat store.)

Here’s John Oliver with the full story.