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
mespo72dittoditto-
I understand the Coen Brothers are looking for an exciting new scenario to bring to the screen. If they visit the Turley Blog regularly, you should be hearing from them soon. “Gone With The List” has box office boffo written all over it! Author! Author!
RE: Woosty’s still a Cat, February 8, 2011 at 9:39 pm
As of a few minutes ago, there was a decently clear and detailed (to me, anyway) account of system dynamics on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics
And, my goodness (pun intended), Woosty… now you have really done it… {must not forget: 😉 }
There is a curious problem about closed systems. A closed system can only exist as a model; no actual closed system can ever exist, because it cannot form nor be formed. Existence is an open system, as is every actual system which actually exists within actual existence.
If I want to improve the efficiency of a steam engine, I can use a Carnot cycle closed system model very nicely. I cannot build a closed system steam engine in actual practice, because it would not be possible to keep it supplied with fuel.
The one property which tends to separate engineering from other human activities is the need for practicable accuracy of models because, if modeling is sufficiently accurate, an engineering failure will happen. Hyatt Regency. Tacoma Narrows “Galloping Gertie” Bridge. Challenger. The list is long and sometimes very tragic.
Medical model inaccurate, patient dies, patient was sick, why improve the model?
Law model inaccurate, innocent people found guilty? They did something else wrong anyway.
Not again, did I do it again? Oh. Sorry.
As for autism and sensitivity, I find I am exquisitely sensitive to anything and everything which activates my “Is it possibly child abuse?” neural circuitry.
RE: Woosty’s still a Cat, February 8, 2011 at 9:10 pm
I wonder if I can unriddle that “good-bad” thing. What do I have to lose but my salvation if I make an attempt?
I strayed over to eBay on the Internet and did s search for “tube tester” and a few hundred items showed up, some with color pictures that offer the Enlarge option.
I looked at a couple such Enlarged pictures, and, sure enough, on the tube testers whose pictures I found, there is a meter scale which is red to the left, yellow in the middle, and green to the right. Printed in the red area is “BAD” in the yellow area, “?”, and in the green area “GOOD”…
So, good or bad is a quality which can sometimes be measured. For vacuum tubes on the tube testers whose pictures I checked, “GOOD” means that the cathode or filament emission is above a minimum value such that the emission will ordinarily be suitable for the vacuum tube to function as intended in a vacuum tube electronic circuit.
Good and bad, along with questionable, appear to me to be about suitability for a particular purpose. Years ago, some folks gave me old radio stuff, obsolete stuff. I was given a couple Cunningham CX-301A vacuum tubes. One has an open filament, and is useless in a radio intended to be used for listening to radio broadcasts. In a radio, that would be bad tube. However, I may some day decide to build a non-working model of an early one tube regenerative radio. For that purpose, the filament being open would not matter, and the tube which would be bad in a working radio would be good in a model never intended to work.
Good and bad are not intrinsic properties of some thing, hence there are no good people and there are no bad people, and Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book title, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” messes up on connotation-denotation issues. And I saw TV programs made before progeria led to the death in old age shortly after the bar mitzvah of Harold Kushner’s son Aaron. Rabbi Kushner wrote to the effect that Aaron’s life had made the book possible, while his death made it necessary.
Good or bad appear to me to be about suitability for a particular purpose. As an engineer, I need no unusual human divinity to sort out good vacuum tubes from bad ones, though a particular tube may be good for one use and bad for another.
And, don’t let me forget, 🙂
There are nuances in Woosty’s words … right/wrong, good/evil are most often black and white … there is no harm in considering (pondering) shades of gray before reaching a decision … it helps in keeping independence of thought and leaves one less vulnerable to blindly following the “pronouncements” of others.
Dr. Harris I once read a study that purported the fact that Autism is actually a spectral place of such heightened sensitivity that the flood of everyday informational input to the senses was actually perceived as painful and a part of autism was actually a response to protect oneself from that overload.
As far as system dynamics goes…we all travel in ‘systems’….isn’t it helpful to know, (effect-wise, that is,) if the system is a closed one or open?
The whole good bad thing is a crappy way to look at anything….it breaks an equation down into a black/white end-game which is ridiculous if the event involves anymore than 1 person. It becomes the same as win/lose. Unless you are playing poker, this type of thinking can lead to horrific consequences even when one ‘wins’
There is that denotation-connotation thing again?
Denotation: harmful or helpful
Connotation good or bad
So?
If it is harmful it is wrong-bad.
If it is helpful it is right-good.
If it is not known whether harmful-helpful/wrong-bad/right-good, then it is good, helpful and right to learn what is which, how, why, when, where, and regarding whom.
It is one thing to know right-good and wrong-bad, which are of declarative connotation, and quite another to understand helpful-hurtful as procedural (process?) denotation.
The effect of authoritarianism on these aspects of existence is as though to grind them all together with mortar and pestle into sub-atomic particles.
There is a name for what may be optimal pondering of actions and consequences, it is the way of system dynamics. System dynamics involves developing plausible scenarios while using causal loop diagramming and stock and flow charting. There is an actual, well established science about optimal pondering of actions and their consequences.
I did that as an aspect of my reverse-engineering the adversarial system. Not wanting more flying fur, I shall not provoke what may happen were I to again attempt to share my results.
I have been very actively using system dynamics in choosing what words to use on this blawg. And I get unimagined results, so system dynamics seems obviously far more heuristic than algorithmic.
Meanwhile my wife and I went out for our anniversary celebration dinner. The Mandarin Garden, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Broccoli beef and pineapple chicken. Delicious.
Two fortune cookies. In mine, “You are often unaware of the effect you have on others.” Really! That is the message that was in my fortune cookie. What a magnificent description of my life as an autistic person.
Only… That is true for everyone, autistic or otherwise. There is an art of a sort to writing fortune cookie messages. The denotation needs to be universal, the connotation as though only relevant to the one who got the cookie and its message.
Dessert for our anniversary is at home, soon. Alcohol-free Tiramisu.
As my anniversary present to my wife, I gave her a scantily gold plated necklace with a heart and small key with cubic zirconium decoration. I also gave her a musical card, with the beginning of, “I only have eyes for you…” and the note that my heart and the key to my heart belong to her.
Autistic people are real. Autistic people are complete, real people, unless convinced otherwise, by authoritarian deception?
Autistic people convinced otherwise are complete, real people who are, only as connotation, mistakenly convinced otherwise.
So, one way or another, I observe that it is helpful to learn what is hurtful (denotation) and to associate the connotation of good with the denotation of what is helpful.
Choices happen, and choosing to not choose is merely a choice.
Back in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, when I began to do computer programming, in the days when compilers like Fortran and Watfor were buggy, I observed that people, including children, are like computers. They do what you tell them to do, whether you mean it or not.
Chan L. 1, February 8, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Woosty:
you don’t know good and bad? Why not?
What is harm? If you have surgery your body is harmed but it is for the good.
You don’t have to be God to know good and evil.
——————-
No, I don’t know good and bad. I know right and wrong….legal vs illegal….but no, good and bad (or ‘evil’ is beyond my judgement just as its beyond yours.
If you have surgery properly the odds of harm are pretty slim depending on the nature of the surgery. If you go to a back alley hack….you may well end up harmed.
perhaps a good question to ask is what good can come of_____?
“I think if people spent more time actually pondering if their actions are ‘harnful’ rather than ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, the world would be a much safer and pleasanter place.” (Woosty’s still a Cat)
OOPs!
‘harmful’
“I think if people spent more time actually pondering if their actions are ‘harnful’ rather than ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, the world would be a much safer and pleasanter place.” (Woosty’s still a Cat)
====================================================
I agree
Woosty:
you don’t know good and bad? Why not?
What is harm? If you have surgery your body is harmed but it is for the good.
You don’t have to be God to know good and evil.
“Which leads me to ponder, “Is evil good or bad?”
What if the proper answer is simply, “Yes.”?” Dr. Harris
——————
I think it is impossible for man to actually know ‘good or bad’…we are not G*d.
We can however understand and seek to refrain from causing
‘harm’.
I think if people spent more time actually pondering if their actions are ‘harnful’ rather than ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, the world would be a much safer and pleasanter place.
If it is found to be bad and it is not done again, it is good to have been bad. So good is done by being bad.
Sounds good to me.
Chan L. and Woosty’s still a Cat:
Thanks.
The curious irony about Lucy’s name is that it is a feminine version of Lucifer, meaning “bearer of light.”
Only, in my handy dictionary, a synonym for “Lucifer” is “Satan.”
Which leads me to ponder, “Is evil good or bad?”
What if the proper answer is simply, “Yes.”?
What if it is good to learn what is bad, and bad to not learn what is bad, and therefore, in a world which exists as events continually happening which never exactly happened before, might it be good to do what is bad, in order to learn what is bad, in order to learn how to avoid doing doing what is bad, and is all that anything other than good?
I find such thinking simple for a typical 18 month old toddler and terribly difficult for typical adults…
‘illuminating my wife’s and my 36th wedding anniversary, today.”
Congratulations! and that’s no fraud!!!!
Dr. Harris:
congratulations. That is indeed a momentous occasion.
RE: J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., February 8, 2011 at 3:12 pm
For the record, and only for the record, the intended pronunciation of “kook” rhymes with the usual pronunciation of “book.”
And so:
A cat’s tail in a vise
Simply isn’t very nice–
When came the vise squad,
Crying out loud, fraud!
Meanwhile…
Our younger cat, Lucy, brings brightness into our home, illuminating my wife’s and my 36th wedding anniversary, today.
It takes a cat to know a cat;
Now, what think you of that?
Someone unwittingly steps on my tail,
Reflexively comes out an aweful wail!
Without, intact, my tail —
Will I not surely fail?
My whole life work ail,
And thus, not prevail?
Perhaps I work to write a book —
To learn, am I really a kook?
lol! you are funny…. ^..^
Woosty,
Yes, indeed.
Dr. Abraham Low, in “Mental Health Through Will Training,” describes the benefits of seeking a total view, which is, methinks, merely the putting together an aggregation of partial views in intelligible form.
As much as partial views regarded as total views condemn viewers to factitious disputation, so actualized totalization of view identically vanishes the means of dispute.
And only the smile of that Cheshire cat lingers on?
As I find I have learned.
As, having so learned, I so understand.
I come here only to share; for I am incapable of not to care.
Here, kitty! Here, kitty! Here, kitty?
Oh. Sorry. You were here all the time.
Purrrrr. Meow. Purrrrrrr.
Good kitty!
Curiosity saved the cat!
Dr. Harris you mayt enjoy this one;
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVC3E-8_fiw&w=480&h=390]