Zach Wahls, 19, is a University of Iowa student who gave a remarkable presentation at a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives concerning same-sex marriage. Wahls has two mothers and came to tell legislators about his parents and his life.
Despite such a striking presentation, the resolution passed the Iowa house 62-37.
Here is the language:
House Joint Resolution 6 – Introduced HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 6 BY ALONS , ANDERSON , ARNOLD , BALTIMORE , BAUDLER , BRANDENBURG , BYRNES , CHAMBERS , DE BOEF , FRY , DEYOE , DOLECHECK , DRAKE , FORRISTALL , GARRETT , GRASSLEY , HAGENOW , HAGER , HANUSA , HEATON , HEIN , HELLAND , HORBACH , HUSEMAN , IVERSON , JORGENSEN , SHAW , KAUFMANN , KLEIN , KOESTER , LOFGREN , MASSIE , MOORE , PAULSEN , PAUSTIAN , PEARSON , PETTENGILL , SANDS , RASMUSSEN , RAYHONS , ROGERS , SCHULTE , SCHULTZ , SODERBERG , SWEENEY , WATTS , UPMEYER , VAN ENGELENHOVEN , VANDER LINDEN , WAGNER , WINDSCHITL , L. MILLER , J. SMITH , S. OLSON , J. TAYLOR , and WORTHAN
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION
A Joint Resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution 1 of the State of Iowa specifying marriage between one man and one woman as the only legal union that is valid or recognized in the state.
BE IT RESOLVED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF IOWA: 5 TLSB 1109YH (7) 84 pf/rj
H.J.R. 6 Section 1. The following amendment to the Constitution of 1 the State of Iowa is proposed: 2 Article I of the Constitution of the State of Iowa is amended by adding the following new section:Marriage. SEC. 26. Marriage between one man and one woman shall be the only legal union valid or recognized in this state. Sec. 2.
REFERRAL AND PUBLICATION. The foregoing amendment to the Constitution of the State of Iowa is referred to the general assembly to be chosen at the next general election for members of the general assembly, and the secretary of state is directed to cause the same to be published for three consecutive months previous to the date of that election as provided by law.
EXPLANATION. This joint resolution proposes an amendment to the 16 Constitution of the State of Iowa specifying that marriage between one man and one woman shall be the only legal union valid or recognized in this state. The joint resolution, if adopted, would be referred to the next general assembly for adoption a second time before being submitted to the electorate for ratification.
Jonathan Turley
The important people here already know who I am, sport.
As to “your verification”?
That sounds a lot like the identity phishing I get at my e-mail every time I kick a troll’s ass, although they are usually looking for my account passwords too.
Too bad you’re wasting your time.
I am direct in what I say and what I mean. If you don’t like that? Too bad.
But all this defense you’re playing?
Just reeks of trollery.
To be clear, I care very little – almost nothing – about who you are. Who you are is irrelevant to me. It’s what you are in your words that is important. You’re a propagator of anti-legal, inherently antisocial and destructive propaganda. If you don’t like being busted for it? Awwwwwww. That’s just too bad. I’m sure you’d find a more receptive audience at a Koch Bros. sponsored site.
A good belly laugh is good for the circulation.
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.
Name on birth certificate: JAMES BRIAN HARRIS
Present legal address: 3635 Zirbel Rd., Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235-9433
Business Phone: 920-746-0107
Yahoo email: drjbrianharris@yahoo.com
Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer No. 34106-6
Wisconsin Master Electrician Certification No. 660912
Amateur Radio Call Sign: W9GUO
Amateur Radio Operator Privileges: Extra Class
High School: Sturgeon Bay, WI & Detroit Lakes, MN
College: Carleton College, physics major, 3 years, did not complete degree
University: University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, B.S. (High Honors) in Engineering, Bioengineering major
Doctorate: University of Illinois at Chicago, Ph.D. in Bioengineering
Church membership: Hope United Church of Christ, Sturgeon Bay, WI
I am direct as to who I am.
So, you are indirect unless you can give me comparable information that I can independently verify.
If I am more direct than you, please provide, on this blawg:
Name on Birth Certificate
Present Legal Address
Professional License information
Other licenses, such as pilot or ham radio
Business Telephone
Education
Community group affiliation(s)
Absent your being direct as to who you are, nothing else can I take to be other than farcical abuse and professional impropriety enigma, or perhaps a research persona.
So, self-image projection is commonplace. I do not project my image, I am myself and that is all I need to be.
My indirectness?
ROFLMAO
Oh, that is funny, Cap’n Obfuscation.
I have noticed that people who are insecure and project their self-image onto others as a diverting defense often, in the manner of “Freudian slips” do as it appears to me that you have done.
Perhaps your indirectness has led to my being deceived about you; indirectness tends to do that, and indirectness may be both the psychological defense and the psychological defensively defended.
I do not confront you, I do not challenge you. I merely seek to defend myself from what, if actually serious, would be terrible professional abuse.
I use words as a shield against attack and not as an attack weapon. I do not confront people, I merely seek words to inform someone shooting arrows of hate toward me that I find such unseemly.
My wife and I may have company after 11:00 am tomorrow, so I will write a form of press release for the Advocate, to take to them after our company leaves.
Falsehood dances the Dance of Deception. I am a person who uses my actual name on the Internet whenever an Internet activity allows me to do that. I need not hide to conceal deception. I have no deception to conceal.
Die Zeit vergeht.
Since you were the one complaining, I was clearly referring to you.
And for someone who “doesn’t believe in confrontation” and “doesn’t confront others”?
You certainly seem to have overcome that shyness.
Again, the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
(Pst! That’s Shakespeare.)
BiL,
I never considered whether you be man, woman, both, neither, or else; but now that you definitively claim that you protest too much, I shall treat you like a lady. Of course, I treat ladies, men, bisexuals, asexuals, and nonsexuals as unique persons without category-labeling and concomitant prejudice.
It is good, finally that you have come clean and admitted that you protest too much.
I have long thought that, but out of decency and courtesy, thought it best that you realize that for yourself and tell the world in your own words, as you now have finally done.
I forgive you absolutely and completely.
You must feel great, now that your conscience has been purged and cleansed.
Congratulations!
I personally welcome you, if you decide to join the rest of us who live honestly.
The lady doth protest to much, methinks.
If no one else will call the Door County Advocate, I guess I will need to do that.
How about I give others until about 11:00 am, tomorrow, January 7, 2011 to call before I call them?
I plan not to call the Sheriff…
I have no firearm, I have no weapon with which to defend myself except my being truthful.
I am waiting quietly for the Door County Sheriff to pound on our front door, to arrest me. How long need I wait?
RE: Woosty’s still a Cat, February 6, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Of course, there is need for authority, and, in the scientific psychology sense, the authority needs to be a lawful authority, in the sense of the laws of biophysics, and those who represent this biophysical (the authority beings, objectively real, testable, and capable of being rejected if not objective; and the authority not being any person or combination of persons) need to function in the authoritative-recprocal manner I have previously mentioned as the viable alternative to the inescapable passive-aggressive duality outcome of person-as-authoritarian judge and jury.
My parents were both autistic, they both understood that an unborn fetus was fully a person, and that, in the sense of Carl Rogers Book title, “On Becoming a Person” was impossible because it is impossible to become what one already is.
Thus, my parents treated me, much as they did my three-year-older brother, as a person from before I was born. While they did take me to church the first Sunday after I was discharged from St. James Hospital, in Butte, Montana because they could not afford a baby sitter, I have never heard that they would not have taken me to church if they had been easily able to pay a baby sitter.
My parents never taught me that I had made a mistake I could have avoided, or should have avoided, because they did not really believe that social convention even before I was born.
The authoritarian tradition creates its own necessity, because, once one has accepted some form of, “I did something I could have avoided doing, I should and could have done otherwise, it’s my fault…” the brain is broken and the broken brain needs authoritarian control because, and only because, of its having been broken by authoritarian coercive trauma.
Because the trauma is physical trauma within the brain, and because it is the result of a thought pattern which generated an addictive circus rhythm, it only takes a suitable non-addictive thought pattern in the brain, and everyday brain plasticity will repair the damage.
That is is possible is illustrated in my doctoral dissertation in the section on the mental health professional.
The way the comments on this blawg are happening gives rise in me to a simple suggestion. Ever hear of journalism? Ever hear of investigative reporting? I have, I worked while in high school for the Detroit Lakes Tribune (in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota).
The local paper, the Door County Advocate just might be willing to do some investigative reporting if several people from around the country called them and told them about this blawg and what I have been posting here.
I hold an FCC Amateur Radio Operator and Station License, Extra Class, which can be verified from public records. My station call sign is W9GUO, which is public record information.
And, on the Door County Amateur Radio Club web site is a sort-of-awful picture of me, the url being
http://admin.itol.com/~mahnke/mempic/W9GUO.jpg
As for the post by BiL, to wit:
[begin post by BiL]
Buddha Is Laughing 1, February 6, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Blah blah blah, troll.
I don’t have to prove anything other than he’s a fraud as presented here: which he tacitly admitted in both action and word.
Really, your man-crush on me is most unbecoming.
[end post by BiL]
The news, BiL, is that I admitted no such thing. Your skill at distorting words into their opposites is astonishing to me.
I defined “Troll” in terms of an old Norwegian chidren’s story.
Countless innocent people have been convicted of crimes they did not commit by that sort of linguistic trickery.
This is well illustrated in the movie, “My Cousin Vinny,” when the sheriff tells one of the young men that he shot the Sack-O-Suds clerk, and the young man asks, “I shot the clerk?” and the sheriff, not noticing that he had been asked a question, regarded the question as a confession.
In a movie script, someone can ask a question, have if misunderstood as a confession, and end up found innocent.
I doubt that such is very common in a real court of law, unless the defendant(s) have lawyers at or above the scripted skill level of Vinny. Why else The Innocence Project?
I am a member of Hope United Church of Christ, in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. From their web site a few minutes ago:
[begin Hope Church web site excerpt]
Rev. Phillips Sweet to Lead Adult Forum and Worship at Hope UCC.
What happens when we don’t forgive? Some of the most tragic “unforgiven” persons are members of the same family as those who, somehow, cannot bring themselves to forgive them.
[end Hope Church web site excerpt]
Dr. Sweet is the Hope UCC pastor emeritus.
The church web site is:
www(dot)hopechurchdc(dot)org
Go, take a look. Look at the church sign as pictured on the web site: “ALL ARE WELCOME”
Hope Church is one of the “Open and Affirming” congregations in the United Church of Christ, We have had openly gay ministers. I have been a member of both the Deacons and the Trustees. Once a deacon, always a deacon; I am a deacon in Hope United Church of Christ, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, though I am not now serving on any of the church boards or committees.
I was co-chairman of the Open and Affirming Committee at the time the church adopted its Open and Affirming Statement. I made sure that no human biological condition (schizophrenia, bisexual, atheist, deist, Buddhist, born-again, or any other condition that anyone can imagine), would allow excluding any
person from membership.
I am a member by covenant, having joined Hope Congregational Church on June 28, 1953, when I was fourteen. I have an original “worship folder” from that church service. Hope United Church is a covenant-based church, each member’s beliefs are only a matter of personal conscience; there are no required dogmas or doctrines for membership.
What I am coming to wonder is whether BiL is being as honest as I am being. How could that be possible if his view of me is dreadfully wrong? While BiL, as I understand his writing, apparently deems me fraudulent, I find BiL to be a truly honest person acting out some form if intense childhood trauma, and I find him completely innocent in every way.
If I am fraudulent, there is a proper way for an attorney-at-law to report a fraud, given that there is no attorney-client privilege with BiL and me.
Because of the Tarasoff decision, methinks in many states my being a fraud would mean I am a danger to others as a sociopath or psychopath, and my so being would be proper reason, in the public safety interest, to report the fraud.
The Door County Sheriff may be reached by telephone at (920) 746-2400 (the non-emergency number) and my address, as is on my Professional Engineer records at the Wisconsin Department of Regulation and Licensing, is 3635 Zirbel Road, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and this address is in the Town of Nasewaupee.
Think me a fraud? Call the Door County Sheriff and have them send a deputy to investigate.
Think me a charlatan? Call the Door County Advocate, during normal business hours and have them assign a reporter to check me out. The Advocate phone number is (920) 743-3321.
To repeat the phone numbers:
(920) 746-2400 is the Door County Sheriff non-emergency number.
(920) 743-3321 is the Door County Advocate
Years ago, my dad told me that, in his experience in playing chess, I had the most powerful end game method he had ever encountered.
BiL:
Endgame?
Checkmate?
I come only to help improve the law so it becomes feasible for people to really be law-abiding by duly-diligent conscientious achievable effort.
BiL, I find no fault with you. As the circumstances of your life have allowed you to live your life as you have lived it, so also me and my life.
BiL, according to as is said in The Reality-Based Community, of which I believe I am a valid member and where I have posted many comments, you are totally entitled to your own opinions, but you are absolutely, categorically not entitled to your own facts.
As I think Professor Jonathan Turley believes, else why does it appear right under his name at the top of this thread,
Res ipsa loquitur (“The thing itself speaks”)
Or, in my own words, THE TRUTH ITSELF SPEAKS.
I am listening, who else is listening?
just wishfull thinking on your part.
Blah blah blah, troll.
I don’t have to prove anything other than he’s a fraud as presented here: which he tacitly admitted in both action and word.
Really, your man-crush on me is most unbecoming.
well socialism is a manifestly bad idea but you promote that. So you promote bad ideas too. Free country so you are certainly entitled to have screwy ideas.
But I don’t think anyone has called you a liar because of those ideas or your belief in them.
no, not at all. One of your main contentions is that he doesn’t have autism and used it as an entry for reasons of sympathy. Using it as a foil to possible criticism.
Seems to me that is a major part of your argument against Dr. Harris. Prove he doesn’t have autism since you have called him a liar.
I have read part of his dissertation and don’t agree with his ideas but I accept that he has autism. But you and others have given him a good deal of grief over it. Unnecessarily in my opinion. So prove he doesn’t have autism. Or would him having autism put a different spin on things?
“Such ordinary events, if there are enough of them, are all it takes to teach a child the ways of authoritarianism and its resulting passive-aggressive life style.
Because some form of authoritarian–passive-aggressive life style is regarded as normal and essential for human society, it is my best guess that I alone, at the Auditorium late last evening recognized and understood that the terrible shattering of a human brain was again happening.”
——————————
Brian (if I may…),
There is always so much in your posts but I picked this bit out as it sparked something in me…
I agree with your observation but that does not mean that a society can operate without some form of authoritarianism. I think when those who are the authority overstep position and purpose that harm comes to individuals and society as a whole. Also, the necessary authoritarian actions that are appropriate to a 2 year old do not look the same in adult behavior…although I would argue that the end result…ability to function within a society in a healthy manner is still the desired outcome. Towards adults, authority run amok is abuse/torture/failure to serve, with children it is child abuse/neglect/exploitation. The behaviour of the AUTHORITY, be it parent or babysitter, police or priest, courts or politicians or whatever… is always the determining factor.
You must be under the mistaken impression I give a damn what you (or he) thinks or says beyond exposing it as bad ideas.
Buddha is laughing:
Why don’t you just call Dr. Harris at his house in Wisconsin? You can find out where he lives in a post I made above and call local information.
He isn’t hiding so why don’t you call and confirm instead of casting assertions of which you have no knowledge? Everything I have checked is exactly as he says it is. You afraid? Chicken? I imagine so, bullies usually are.
No sale.
Last evening, Feb. 5, 2011, my wife volunteer-ushered at the Door Community Auditorium, in Fish Creek, Wisconsin.
The event was the annual Door County Idol. Eight Door County high school students performed. Mention of the event is available on the Internet, when I did a Google Search for:
“doorcountystyle.com” AND “door county idol”
the top item of that search was about the event of last evening.
Volunteer ushers get to watch events “for free” as did my wife and I. Only, the seats were all sold out, so ushers could stand in out-of-the way places or, as I did, listen over the sound system in the vestibule area.
After the event, the ushers clean up dropped programs, tickets and other items which a vacuum cleaner would not pick up.
When the auditorium was properly “picked up,” my wife and I, along with the other ushers, got ready to leave. Some of the people who had helped with the staging of the event were also leaving.
One woman had her about-two-year-old child with her, and he was as though tired in the manner usual for a two year old after 10:00 at night.
The mother found herself as though in conflict with her son, he began to fight and scream in protest. He could not stop his mother from getting his jacket on, he did all he could and, as is usual, was overwhelmed. As my wife and I left, it seemed to me I could still hear him crying with all his might an maine.
Such ordinary events, if there are enough of them, are all it takes to teach a child the ways of authoritarianism and its resulting passive-aggressive life style.
Because some form of authoritarian–passive-aggressive life style is regarded as normal and essential for human society, it is my best guess that I alone, at the Auditorium late last evening recognized and understood that the terrible shattering of a human brain was again happening.
Who on earth am I.
Let me use words, whether or not they work poorly.
I am an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person.
I am a person neither more nor less special than is anyone else.
I am a person who, before my first birthday, had asked for one simple gift.
I asked, with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength, to be given a life in which I would be given whatever I needed that I might best serve God, doing so with nothing of my life withheld.
Because my parents could not afford to pay a baby sitter, my dad’s salary as a minister was too small for them to pay one without depriving my brother and me of what we needed to thrive, I was taken to church, at the United Congregational Church, in Butte, Montana, starting with the first Sunday after I was born.
In August, 1997, the day before she died of a heart attack, my mother and I had a gentle conversation of over two hours’ duration. In it, she reminded me that, as she said that day, “You never went through the terrible twos.”
I never for an instant, in my whole life, have believed that anything can ever happen other than in the best actually possible way.
Thus, I have lived my entire life in a world which is always absolutely perfect in every way, in every aspect, in every detail.
The tragedy of being socially normal is to believe anything else.
Taken to church every Sunday unless I was too ill (in the usual sense of a cold, chicken pox, measles and the like), I was exposed to The Lord’s Prayer and The Gloria Patri, Sunday after Sunday, and that repeated exposure made it impossible for me to not assign meaning, as a pre-talking infant tends to do, to those two aspects of the church services to which I was regularly taken.
The Lord’s Prayer was the traditional “debts” version of protestantism. The Goria Patri (the Doxology) was the traditional Anglican version set to the music of Henry Greatorex.
My first, and ever since, understanding of The Lord’s Prayer, put in traditional words that I find now best describe the that first understanding is:
“Lord, God, Almighty, give to me that which I need that I may best serve You; nevertheless, not my will but your will be done; for this I pray through Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior; so be it; may my whole life be this prayer; Amen.”
Words merely symbolize meaning, and any meaning may be symbolized with any number of words. The meaning of that prayer is unchanged if the words are:
“Existence, all that has happened, is happening and will ever happen or not happen, give me that which best allows me to understand myself within the context of existence as existence evolves in creating itself; let me do this by accepting without judgment all that happens during my life, that existence may create the existence of a world without cruelty and violence, to the extent possible as is possible.”
I have no need for superstition, the paranormal, or any other scientific nonsense.
As for the Doxology words,
“Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen.”
In my words now, as the Doxology first meant to me and ever since has meant,
“Giver of the gift of life, as being what is happening, what has already happened, and what has yet to happen or not happen, which is of existence moving through the realm of possibilities in the process of generating itself, for existence is.”
No magic to be found there…
No tricks, no authoritarian tyranny.
What is is what is is what is, as process.
Without my realizing it would happen, without my realizing it would not happen, it appears to me that an effective psychoanalysis of Buddha is Laughing happened. At the core of the conscious awarenes of Buddha is Laughing apparently is a belief in fraud, deception, and dishonesty. Such a belief, in my view, can only result from, as in the main title of the Nancy C. Andreasen book, “The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry” (first published, I believe, in 1984).
Break a child about two years of age, as I observed happening late last evening at the Door Community Auditorium, and it is beyond insanely absurd to hold accountable the two year old for the way he will adapt to such experiences, they are overwhelming.
What I heard and saw was a child being put into brain-breaking, shattering terror, as though for his own good.
In his epithets and pejorative language, Buddha is Laughing is merely reporting his infant-child broken brain trauma. For this, he bears not a whit of responsibility, for he was terribly overwhelmed much as was that screaming little boy late last evening.
I never went through the terrible twos, I never went through the infant-child transition, I have no infant-child discontinuity.
My brain is simply unbroken.
And that is why I live as I live and do as I do, and write as I write.
In my studying the Bahá’í Faith, I remember coming upon a story.
In the dawn of a new day, people living on a mountain, there will be one person who first sees the first ray of light of the dawn of that new day. That person is neither more nor less special than is anyone else.
To which I add:
On the dawn of a new day of understanding, there will be one person who first sees the first ray of light of that new day.
On the dawn of a new day of knowledge, there will be one person who first sees the first ray of light of that new day.
I asked to see, understand, and know the first ray of light of a new day, if that were possible.
Ask ask without limit, and you will receive as you asked?
I cannot demonstrate otherwise.
Yet it has become, pardon my English, bloody clear why someone like Jesus of Nazareth would have ended up nailed to a cross.
Just read the words Buddha is Laughing has written regarding me and my work.
And then understand, know, and affirm that perfect forgiveness is absolutely without limit.
Selah! Selah! Selah!