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
Faith means the assurance of what we hope for;
it is our conviction about the things we cannot see.
Hebrews 11:1
The Lord is my helper;
I will not be afraid.
What can men do to me?
Excerpt, Hebrews 13:6
From The Bible: An American Translation
RE: mespo727272, February 7, 2011 at 8:41 pm
Home. I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get on that list! After all, tomorrow is another day!
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I have indicated that I am not able to think in words. Within that limitation, I use words as best it is given to me to use them, moment by moment.
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From: J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., February 7, 2011 at 5:21 pm
“Oh, you did make my list, just as did everyone else, I indicated that the list was not complete.”
My list of civil people omits no person, whether real or imaginary. Why? Because, as a sufficiently diligent study of social psychology will reveal, there is no personal (or dispositional) attribution which is not intrinsically false.
All valid (or true) attributions regarding human behavior are perfectly situational, including believing otherwise.
There is a little story of a sower of seeds, purposefully scattering seeds as though randomly, so as to not prejudice any seed in terms of what it might grow into. Some seeds land among the soil of what it may be wise, when possible, to learn what to do in the future, other seeds land among the soil of what it may be wise, when possible. to learn to avoid doing.
In what soil the seed lands profoundly affects the growth of the seed, whether it appears to be a desired plant or an undesired plant. Alas, which happens is not about the seed, its value, merit, or character, but depends only upon the soil which nurtures its growth.
And yet, there may be many things of which learning to avoid doing it becomes wise as it grows, and far fewer which grow into what become wise to do as it grows.
Because there are many ways to do something poorly for every way to do it superbly well, there is far more soil which nurtures seeds into what is wise learned as being of what is wisely avoided, once it has been learned whether the soil nurtured what is and what is not wisely done after which is which has been learned.
Every such seed is tiny, smaller than microscopic, so the whole of the seed that is observable is made entirely of what the soil contained. A mustard seed is immense beyond immense in comparison with the seeds I here describe.
As the seed grows into what it becomes, what is observable is the seed and not the soil which nurtured it. It may be plainly obvious the seed is responsible for what it does, only because what is plainly obvious may not be what really is what the seed was before it grew.
To hold a seed that grew into a form of what is wisely avoided accountable for the soil which nurtured it is a little blunder except, by holding the seed accountable for the soil, no reason will be found for not putting more seeds in that soil, and many more seeds will end up growing into what is wisely avoided because of the simple little blunder of thinking that the seed made the soil into which it was sown before it had been sown there.
Why would the sower of the seeds not know better than to scatter the seeds chaotically and with complete indifference to the comparative worth of each seed? The sower had never sown such seeds before, and had no way to know what soil would nurture a seed in any particular way.
One might regard that smaller than microscopic seed as the will of the sperm to seek out its mate, the egg it may fertilize if it gets to the egg before another sperm does. The will of different sperm do not compete to fertilize an available egg, they work as a team the better to insure that an available egg may become fertilized.
And, no, the egg is not the soil aforementioned.
The soil is the family-social-cultural milieu into which the fertilized egg, divided and grow as needed to become a fetus being born into that soil. That soil is already fertilized by what previous generations of fertilized eggs which were born and lived as humans left behind during their lives.
Which is why I regard feces as fertilizer, something of biologically formidable value and not at all as waste or a mere byproduct of human social metabolism.
Which is why I previously described my neighbors who are dairy farmers only in respectful ways.
The giver of life makes no trash.
The giver of life makes no waste.
There is only existence creating its own existence; existence is the giver of life which first gave itself life. That existence might come to understand and know itself, it made us.
As I am here, and as you are here, we are here and here we are.
I find no fault with existence and I find no fault with any aspect of existence, because existence is all there ever will be, forever evolving.
Were existence to not exist, there would be nothing to prevent existence from creating itself and, given enough of immense infinitudes of nothing, existence will exist, because if nothing exists, nothing is impossible because it already exists.
And I would guess that takes formal logic to its absolute limit, the limit of existence, for existence cannot not exist.
Existence is the process of creation evolving itself.
And we are here, and here we are.
So, what’s next?
BIL:
“Awwwwww. I’m really broken up about not making your lil’ list. I’m sure mespo will be too.”
***************
“Gone With The List”
Scene 1
(A dark dreary law office with just a flickering laptop screen and the low roar of the custodian’s vacuum in the distance.)
mespo:
[mespo falling to the floor, center stage. Right back of wrist touching forehead, elbow high and swooning]
Shattered — just shattered. Can I go on?
[mespo pounding the carpet and wailing in disbelief]
First it was Nixon… then American Idol, now this … what will I do now? What should I do? What can I do?
[After a long pause and slowly looking upward with a pensive face tracked with tears]
But is there hope for redemption? If the list isn’t complete for Buddha, maybe not for me too.
[Rising and looking towards a rising sun in the distance through the window]
Home. I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get on that list! After all, tomorrow is another day!
[Violins rise in the background. Camera pans a scarlet, violet, and aureolin sky. mespo, now merely a silhouetted figure against the glass, turns to head home]
RE: Chan L., February 7, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Dr. Harris:
you dont like Aristotle?
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Alas, Aristotle died before I was born, and I never got to meet him; that rules out both my liking or disliking him.
However, as a basis principle, I like every person regardless of the person’s circumstances.
While I like people, as individual people, who act in the bullying manner, I happen to find bullying quite profoundly problematic.
Phlogiston, the luminiferous æther, the immovability of the earth, the notion of the imperfection of actual human nature, and many other now-shown-not-completely-true notions have been the necessary “stepping stones” humanity has needed to come to understand itself in its actual environment.
I like that Aristotle did work which subsequent work has been built upon.
If that means that I like Aristotle, then I do not not like Aristotle.
Dr. Harris:
you dont like Aristotle?
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 7, 2011 at 4:49 pm
“Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.” – Aristotle
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Do you really have an Aristotelian view of biophysics?
If so, Galileo Galelei solved that sort or error quite a while ago:
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/aristotle_dynamics.html
I live in the world of today!
Child’s play is my my every day!
Oy veh!
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 7, 2011 at 11:37 am
1:
Awwwwww. I’m really broken up about not making your lil’ list. I’m sure mespo will be too.
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Oh, you did make my list, just as did everyone else, I indicated that the list was not complete.
Thought you might out your self-opinion without realizing it.
Alas, I am unable to figure out whether you did or did not do that.
You would have to tell me, for I never impute anything to anyone and only know or understand anything anyone tells me about any anyone when what any anyone make any intelligible sense to me.
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2:
My evidence is that law has been required for every civilization known to man since ancient Babylon and Sumer to function and that dispute resolution (as a necessary component of legalism) requires adversarial process because as a matter of logic, disputes are adversarial in nature by simply being disputes.
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I find your evidence to be flawless as far back as it goes. What about the civilizations of such antiquity as to have become effectively unknown to man because they occurred tens and more of millenia before before ancient Babalon, Sumer, and their proximate predecessors?
To study those far more ancient civilizations, the only traces I, and other competent researchers (such as the late Joseph Campbell) now appear to exist only within the residual tales embedded within the traces of the myths of pre-history.
If you are not looking where I am looking, you will not be seeing what I am seeing.
Among the earliest written stories of the adversarial system in northern Europe and environs that I have found is in the Icelandic tale of The Saga of Burnt Njal, in which the four courts turned out to be insufficient, and so the fifth court was added to the Thing, in the manner of an appellate court.
There is a personally interesting thing about that story. In it is told, from an Icelandic view, the death of King Brian of Ireland (Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig, or Brian Boru in English) who was killed on Good Friday, because, it being a religious holiday, he would not fight. My parents specifically named me for Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig.
Because of my religious upbringing and my given faith, every day is a Sabbath, and every moment of every day is a Sabbath moment day. Therefore, as it is given to me to accept, affirm, understand, and know my life, there is never a moment not of the sort of religious holiday during which, like King Brian on a religious holiday, I am willing to fight.
Alas, I also choose not to die of my own will or act. King Brian was willing to fight on days not religious holidays. Were I ever to encounter a day not a day The Lord is Making, on any day not to me a religious holiday, I would also refuse to fight any person.
As I am unwilling to fight in this world, also I am unwilling to leave this world.
In not fighting this world and in not leaving this world, what I do is what remains for me to do is that I am actually able to do.
Thus, in the genuine interest of the biologically valid rule of law, here I am.
As it appears to me that you have written only of human history as far back as Babylon and Sumer, and as I have written of the whole of human history as it evinces itself in the myths and fables of present-day society, for all I know, my observable world may be vastly larger than the one you have yet been able to observe.
I have no difficulty whatsoever with your having an adversarial system of law if it works for you.
What I absolutely and categorically disallow is any trace of any hint of any right, privilege, entitlement, or other way, of imposing such a system of adversarial law on me, on any of my friends and relatives, on anyone who objects however slightly to such a rule of law, or on anyone who may ever be hurt or damaged by such any adversarial form of rule of law.
My decadesl-long intensive and extensive study of biology informs me, without significant exception, that the law of biology, which is the law of life itself, is simply that life is a collaboration wherein competition is valid only as it enhances collaboration. Life is diverse. Diversity is life.
As we appear to have diverse views, as I read your comments, your are welcome, as far as I am concerned, to your views and to live according to them to the extent, and only to the extent, that you do not impose your views onto me when our views differ.
Whereas “the law” is, I allow, your realm of professional competence, and, as you appear to me to have indicated your being an attorney, I surmise that you are a licensed professional, licensed to work only within your professional competence. I find no fault with your competence as an attorney-at-law.
Whereas, I am also a licensed professional, licensed as an engineer with a doctorate in bioengineering. My main research work as a bioengineer has been the reverse-engineering of the structure(s) of human society all the way to the bottom of their “footings” (that is, far below their foundation bottom).
At the interface between the footings of society and the bedrock of society, I came upon a serious “structural defect” — one which, when the footings of human society were laid, was impossible to understand, to know or to avoid. Why impossible to understand, know, or avoid? Evolution had not evolved enough for the interface defect to be recognizable. Only when society (and within society, the the rule of law) had added enough stories to the structure of society did the footing-interface structural defect become overloaded to the extent of unavoidable brittle fracture.
Yet fracture it has. The stories which begin nearly every thread of this blawg are the stories of those fractures.
It is, with me, as though the universe you describe is a microcosm within the world in which I revel in the joy of scientific discovery regarding the plausible process of finding and dispensing the milk of human kindness.
raff,
The moose may be loose, but it is never a cheap date.
Buddha,
That damn moose is expensive!
“Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.” – Aristotle
RE: Chan L., February 7, 2011 at 1:55 pm
No, I am much in favor of the Constitution and limited government as envisioned by our founders.
And I agree your assertion. Totaly correct. An objective rule of law is very important to humans.
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yes!
Yes!
YEs!
YES!
so be it!
So be it!
SO be it!
SO Be it!
SO BE it!
SO BE It!
SO BE IT!
This is a legal blog (aka blawg) and I deem it to be purely about law, the structure of law, the process of law, the development of law, the application of law, the effects of law, and whatever else law is and/or law may do.
Autism and my life have a condition, inseparability, such that, if I am not autistic, I have no actual existence as a person.
I was a member of the Internet List run by Clare Sainsbury, author of “Martian in the Playground; Understanding the Schoolchild with Asperger’s Syndrome” Lucky Ducky Books, available through Amazon and elsewhere.
I was a member of the Australian-based Internet group. Aspergia.com, while it lasted.
I am dues-paid member of the Autism National Committee.
Various autistic people I have known have, from time to time, asked me, as I am a professional engineer, and therefore plausibly an expert witness in court, to learn what I could usefully accomplish so that autistic people do not often find themselves in contempt of law without recourse.
I act as an individual and not as a representative of anyone other than myself.
In a duly diligent search, asking autistic people I have met and asking non-autistic people who have the courage to communicate with me directly and through scholarly searches of the scholarly literature and via Internet search-by-whimsey, I have searched for anyone else who is government-licensed with an expert witness credential who understands the terror of the adversarial system autistic people sometimes encounter, and who has demonstrably accomplished the necessary work to truthfully be capable of accurately describing the enigma of human violence and its systems-engineering-oriented, bioengineering-based plausible remedy.
Part of my notion of learning what would happen were I to post some truthful comments here was to learn if anyone would get back to me who has also done work closely comparable to the work I have done. Silence, so far.
I experience no difficulty with people, I find no fault with any person. What is at the center of my concern is an aspect of what people believe, that is, my concern is about constructs and not about people as entities. I never have difficulties with the entities I encounter as I live my life.
However, I find serious problems within certain constructs. As I use the word, “construct,” it is a synonym for “make-believe” or “imagined construct.”
Note that “imagined construct” is like “imagined imagination” and like “constructed construct”; it is layered.
Imagined construct? Cornell Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, Benedict Anderson, wrote, “Imagined Communities: Second Edition” – Verso, London and New York, 1991.
I find that the community of persons who are law-abiding within the context of the present state of the Anglo-American Adversarial System is a purely imagined community which is perfectly bereft of the slightest trace of an iota of being an actual entity.
I find, as a Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer, that the social construct of an adversarial system of law being other than an devastatingly addictive fantasy is a neurological absurdity of such magnitude as to have become believable only through terrifying coercion, the terrifying coercion of the pandemic endemic to the present, transient, state of the evolution of human society and reality as understood as a societal construct.
The gimmick is simply this. Those who do not, in the sense of autism, understand themselves make laws which autistic people are categorically incapable of obeying, and autistic people are perfectly capable, as a group, to make laws that both autistic and non autistic people can obey.
In this manner, autistic people tend, as a group, to experience non-autistic people as being destructive in ways autistic people already know and understand how to avoid.
There is already an alternative to the adversarial system of law in accord with which many people already live. The alternative is as I attempt to describe.
Whereas I can readily demonstrate that the adversarial system generates brain-scan-observable brain damage and its neurologically valid alternative does not, those of the adversarial system mindset still vastly outnumber those whose lives are firmly grounded in very successful living as valid autistic people; yet the tyranny of the majority defines those who live outside the adversarial system as adversaries in spite of this being a fair approximation of utter nonsense.
I have here written of nothing except my encounters with the adversarial system and its plausibly optimal next phase of social-biological evolution.
This blawg is about the law. I have actually written of nothing else. How long it takes for people to learn this may depend on individual people’s achievable capacity for learning.
I comment here because, and only because, I have a grave, purely scientific concern about the rule of law and its seeming blatant failure to rule effectively, efficiently, and economically.
The problem is not with people, so blaming people inextricably leads to abject failure of problem solving. The problem is within certain pre-scientific constructs which inadvertently became so deeply embedded in the footings of the foundation of law as to masquerade as the bedrock of law.
Mistakes happen.
Learning happens.
I remain willing and able to learn how to make the rule of law actually effective, efficient, and economical, doing so by removing from it such prehistoric superstitions as, being of the footings, are undermining the foundation (viable trust in the rule of law) of the rule of law to crumble.
As an engineer, I understand how to support the foundation, so the footings can properly and safely replaced, so that the foundation can be strengthened in plausibly permanent ways.
Then the rule of law will no longer be the cruel of law for many autistic people.
In sickness and in health, people are permanently married to the rule of law.
Without the rule of law, we are lost.
The rule of law is infected with the cruel of law.
The rule of law is deathly sick.
The deathly sickness is biological; it is neurological.
I am a real Doctor, a real Doctor of Philosophy in Bioengineering.
I merely tell of the cure of the sickness.
Does it taste like bad medicine?
If so, I beseech thee, as though in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken. (apologies to Cromwell)
Long live the rule of law!
I come, not to harm the law, and only to do my little part to help the law as though to heal from its past hurts.
The law does not hurt? Why else this blawg and its sometimes-terrible stories?
Long live the rule of law!
No, I am much in favor of the Constitution and limited government as envisioned by our founders.
And I agree your assertion. Totaly correct. An objective rule of law is very important to humans.
oops
His opinions here invite responsive argument.[Just like mine do….]
The man has shared that he has autism.
I personally find that to be courageous.
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/asd.cfm
He is posting on a blog that promotes discourse and rhetoric and opinion and argument.
It’s not a forum for autism. His opinions here invite.[Just like mine do….]
ps…the manner of the argument betrays the talent of the arguer….:P
Can we get on with it then?????
Maybe you are too dense to see what is necessary and proper for the maintenance of civilization. Given that you think greed is a virtue, there’s really no “maybe” to it either. Anti-legalism is an illogical and stupidly dangerous idea on its face. I don’t give a damn who is spreading it. Without the rule of law and adversarial due process, people would be killing and sometimes eating each other instead of doing the civilized thing: going to court to resolve disputes. I know this because history and human nature tell me so.
Buddha, it is pretty obvious that Dr. Harris is not antisocial. He has autism, which is probably in and of itself pretty lonely. Because your mind doesn’t work the same as others. What you see as antisocial is just a different way of experiencing life.
I would have thought that would be obvious to someone of your intellectual ability. Maybe you are so smart that that doesn’t compute?
raff,
You can, but for every dollar you earn, you have to pay the moose $0.75.
I just want to know if I can make any money from beng on the list or is Palin going to try to trademark that too?
Awwwwww. I’m really broken up about not making your lil’ list. I’m sure mespo will be too.
(That was sarcasm.)
And being a fraud and commission of legally actionable fraud are two distinct things, Circular Logic Boy.
The bottom line is this: you have no evidence and no logical argument to support your assertion that “‘The Adversarial System’ [is] the greatest fraud humanity will likely ever encounter” (J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E. 1, January 29, 2011 at 7:17 pm). My evidence is that law has been required for every civilization known to man since ancient Babylon and Sumer to function and that dispute resolution (as a necessary component of legalism) requires adversarial process because as a matter of logic, disputes are adversarial in nature by simply being disputes. I also don’t resort to begging the question and assuming it’s proof.
I don’t consider civility a virtue when confronting lies and faulty logic spread with a distinctly antisocial agenda.
If you personally find that distasteful?
I really don’t care.