Watch teenager Zach Wahls tell the Iowa House, which is considering a gay marriage ban, that his lesbian mothers made him the good man he is today.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q
Zach Wahls is a 19-year-old kid currently enrolled at the University of Iowa. He's healthy, he goes to church, he owns his own small business, and he's an Eagle Scout. Basically, Wahls is like a lot of high-achieving Midwesterners. There's just one thing: Wahls is also the son of two lesbians.
With the Iowa state legislature currently debating a bill that would ban same-sex marriage in the state, overturning a 2009 supreme court ruling that legalized it, Wahls took to the floor of the Iowa House of Representatives to make it very clear that real love between two people, regardless of sex, yields wonderful results.
"My family really isn't so different from yours after all," he says. "Your family doesn't derive its sense of worth from being told by the state, 'You're married! Congratulations!' The sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones. ... That's what makes a family. So what you're voting here isn't to change us. ... It's voting to change how the law treats us."
Alas, despite his eloquence, Wahls' pleas fell mostly on deaf ears, with the resolution to ban gay marriage and civil unions passing 62 to 37.
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