From Boing Boing:
Zach Wahls—a 19-year-old Iowa college student and the son of two mothers—is one of the many Iowans who thinks it’s wrong to grant special privileges to some families, and deny them to others, based solely on sexual orientation. In a passionate speech to the House Committee, he told legislators that their decision won’t change his family and their love for one another, but codifying discrimination will change Iowa—in ways that harm everyone.
Shakesville has a transcript. Here’s a bit of what Zach said:
I’m not really so different from any of your children. My family really isn’t so different from yours. After all, your family doesn’t derive its sense of worth from being told by the state, “You’re married—congratulations!” No, 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; it comes from the love that binds us. That’s what makes a family.
So what you’re voting here isn’t to change us. It’s not to change our families; it’s to change how the law views us, how the law treats us. You are voting for the first time, in the history of our state, to codify discrimination into our constitution—a constitution that, but for the proposed amendment, is the least amended constitution in the United States of America. You are telling Iowans that some among you are second-class citizens who do not have the right to marry the person you love.
So will this vote affect my family? Would it affect yours? Over the next two hours, I’m sure we’re going to hear plenty of testimony about how damaging having gay parents is on kids. But in my 19 years, not once have I ever been confronted by an individual who realized independently that I was raised by a gay couple.
And you know why? Because the sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.
Thank you very much.
I suspect many anti-SSM folks will latch on to Zach’s statement that the sense of family “comes from the love that binds us.” No, that’s not true, they’ll say; family comes only from coital sex. It’s shallow and self-centered to think that marriage and love are related, they’ll say (apparently SSM opponents don’t care at all whether or not they love the person they’re married to).
I think Zach — who, wisely, has not dedicated his life to attacking the legitimacy of other people’s families — understands a lot more about family than many SSM opponents do. There is more to marriage than love, but love isn’t irrelevant to marriage, and it’s not immature or self-centered for couples in love to want to become a family..
