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
Blouise:
Ok. But why is the Golden Rule, the Golden Rule? What if I am a sado-masochist? Since there is no good/evil and no God what do we do now?
I am just curious.
There have to be standards of good and evil or there is no good and evil and everything is up for grabs to the lowest common denominator.
Thank you Blouise
“When I returned, the college counselor, Dr. Joseph Havens, told me that no one in the class remembered my being in the class until after my body was found on the bottom of the pool ”
————-
well you were a quiet soul weren’t you…
Chan L.
1, February 9, 2011 at 8:47 am
Woosty:
“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.”
Surgery is a controlled injury to your body. And as such causes harm.
As far as good and evil? It is isnt hard to determine and you dont need to be God to determine good/evil and right/wrong.
What do you do if there is no God? Then what? Does that mean there are no standards for human behaviour without a God to moderate?
So Hitler wasnt good or bad, right or wrong, evil or not? He was just some guy that did what he did?
=================================================
Although it may sound otherwise, I do not write the following with the intent to insult.
Your argument is sophomoric in that you have failed to grasp the subtlety of Woosty’s writings and thus missed the point by a substantial distance. Your question, “What do you do if there is no God?” illustrates this in that it was answered in her original statement … for one does not need to believe in god in order to “ponder(ing) if their actions are ‘harnful’ “. Which is, of course, the lesson buried within the “Golden Rule”.
It may, or it may not, be somewhat of a (there is no word I ever heard)!
The title of this super-string thread, “Zach Wahls Has Two Mommies and a Lot of Talent”
There has been a two-mommie family which has been rather well under the societal gendar (which has far greater range than has gaydar) since 1975.
A child of this two-mommie family has said, calling home by telephone, to one mommie, “May I speak to my other mommie?”
The two mommies in this particular family were given a regular marriage license and had a church wedding, the wedding held at “The Chicago Temple” (The First Methodist Church of Chicago) with the Rev. Dr. Pierce, officiating.
That wedding happened on February 8, 1975.
In 1950, my parents, brother, and I were listening the Jack Benny program with “the big radio” (a Philco console model) in the living room of the parsonage of Hope Congregational Church, in Sturgeon Bay. As I recall, Don Wilson began with a joke, about going to London, where “a man was a man,” to Paris, where “a woman was a woman,” and to Copenhagen, where “a man was a woman.”
The radio audience burst out with laughter. I did not laugh and I was unable to observe whether any of my parents and brother laughed. I was, briefly, utterly stunned. For the first time in my life, I knew that I was not perfectly alone among humanity.
After a few minutes, during which I got myself together enough to do anything, I said that I needed “to go to the bathroom” (which was true) and went upstairs to the only bathroom in that parsonage, on the second floor in the northeast corner of the house. I did as was biologically appropriate, which was not taking a bath in the usual sense, and went west and south, and into my bedroom, which was directly above the living room.
I lay down on my bed and I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried, and cried… What saved me then was the radio in the room below being just loud enough that no one in the living room heard me crying as with the unfathomable agony of infinite joy at the mere, distant, possibility of my becoming able, as a member of society, to fully accept and live my life as a person neither more nor less valid than anyone else. That anyone else would ever so accept me, I had no clue nor need to know or understand.
In the late fall of 1957, during my first semester at Carleton College, my dad became “deathly ill” and was later said to have nearly died. My dad told me of his experience, it was of that “near death sort” as told of by Dr. Raymond Moody and others. In that experience, as his physicians thought he might very soon die, he came to a place where he was given a choice, to be free of a life on earth of great difficulty or to continue it. As he told me after he recovered his health, for himself alone, he would have chosen to accept his freedom; for his family and other people he knew and cared deeply about, he choose to continue his life on earth, for as long as such life was possible, because he could not love anyone else less than he loved himself and his life.
I poured through the Carleton library, searching for a way to understand my dad’s seemingly near-fatal prostate disease, and, as I understood from what I had been told, its cancerous aspects.
I learned that testosterone, as is true for all “sex hormones” are carcinogenic, and that, without such carcinogenic hormones, there would be no humans capable of developing sex-hormone-related cancer of any sort, for want of any humans to develop such cancer.
Were I to choose a word, I would say that my gender is gyneandrous. A Google Search came up with 16 results for “gyneandrous,” and no hint of it yet being an English-language word; I therefore choose to here define “gyneandrous” as an English word, thus: “gyneandrous. adj. A personal condition in which the female principle of existence, unconditional love, is in pure harmony with the male principle of existence, conditional love, such that, conflict is resolved unconditionally by collaboration of both female and male principles such that every conflict is resolved through unconditional acceptance of the complete validity of both female and male principles, whereby the female principle is the ultimate arbiter of dispute without impediment of the male principle. Were the male principle the final arbiter, conflict and dispute would remain unresolved. Were the female principle dominant, conflict and dispute would be impossible to recognize, and much less possible to resolve. Also, gyneandrism n. is the condition of being gyneandrous. Gyneandrous is distinct from “androgenous” and “gynandrous,” words already defined and in use in the English language.”
Yesterday was my wife’s and my 36th wedding anniversary, which has been previously mentioned in this thread. I again mention this here for a simple reason. I have not informed nor asked my wife of her possible view of my writing this. Perhaps (please, no!) she will find out what I have done, and today will be the first day of our divorce (please, no!). I write as my conscience directs me to write; her conscience is not my conscience.
I write this for a very, very simple reason. If I actually love, in the agape sense, any person more or less than any other person, regardless of any person’s circumstances, I do not properly love myself, and therefore cannot properly love my wife.
Should she (please, no!) find our marriage covenant broken by my writing this, I shall fully embrace her view as perfectly valid for her, and will do every intelligibly decent possible thing I can do to help her to better get her needs met through divorce if that be the path her conscience truly asks her to take. It is not for me to decide for her any more than it is for me to decide against her.
I live my whole life gyneandrously. I am not, nor ever can be, in actual conflict or dispute with any aspect of existence, not any aspect of what has not yet happened, not in any aspect of what will never happen, not in any aspect which is happening, and not in any aspect which has already happened.
I am an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person, neither more nor less exceptional or special than is anyone else. And I know and I understand who I am, what I am, where I am, when I am, why I am, and how I am.
As it has been given to me to be true to my actual self, so I cannot be false to any other actual self. And that is a fully testable, fully in-principle rebuttable, working hypothesis.
As I am incapable of otherwise: I love all persons in the manner of gyneandry in the agape sense. I love all people with whom I have acquaintance in the manner of gyneandry in the filial sense. And, in the gyneandrous manner, I love my wife, AND ONLY MY WIFE, in the Eros sense.
What happened to me in 1986, when my testicles and I parted company? My cancer risk dropped significantly. My brain responded as though a terrible toxin has been purged from it. My physical ability in the Eros sense never changed. “ED”? What’s that? It is unknown to me.
Starting in 1984, having figured out the probability of my dying from cancer rather young unless prevention was achieved, I began working with physicians in an effort to communicate my cancer risk concern. I met with summary rejection of my concerns, much as some commentators here have rejected my concerns regarding how the rule of law may actually be accomplished.
I informed my brother J. Don Harris, Ph.D. (sociology) of my concerns, and his physicians rejected my concerns. They stopped rejecting my concerns only after my brother had developed terminal cancer. Terminal cancer has a funny property. It simply kills people. My brother’s life took a path perhaps more traveled than the path my life has been taking.
It affects me when an event such as happened on Saturday, February 10, 1996 occurs. I had driven with out daughter to our Oak Park home, and, as I walked into the dining room, I heard the phone ring, picked up, only to hear my wife say, “I have terrible news. Michael and Shelly were killed this morning.” Our son an daughter-in-law.
It affects me when an event such as happened on Tuesday, February 13, 1996 happens. At the wake for our son and his wife, our son’s mother-in-law showed us the restraining order ruling out our having contact with our grandson, Shawn, and his half-sister, Shannon. In the restraining order were adversarial claims, none true, to the effect that my wife and I were dangerous child-abusers.
It affects me when, at the funeral for our son and his wife, our late son’s mother-in-law arranged the seating so my wife, our daughter, and I were totally and completely excluded from being seated as family members.
It affects me when, at the cemetery, as the officiating priest let my wife and me sprinkle holy water on the caskets, I note a look on the countenance of our late son’s mother-in-law as though of such hatred as, were it able to touch me, it would have struck me forever dead on the spot.
It affects me when lie upon lie is told in court about me and my family and the court accepts every significant lie as being truth, and my family is driven from our waterfront home in Sturgeon Bay and driven through Chapter 7 bankruptcy because of the structure and function of the adversarial system.
It affects me when, for every harm, it is given to me to instantly, totally, absolutely, and eternally forgive every harm that comes my way.
Every harm instantly, totally, absolutely, and eternally forgiven, it is given to me to share, as I am actually able to share, my experiences of The Way whereby this happens.
As an anniversary present to my wife and myself, came the book, by Rev. Don Piper with Cecil Murphey, “90 Minutes in Heaven” A True Story of Death and Life” – Revell, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2004. At the top of the front cover are the words, “New York Times Bestseller”
“More than 4 million copies in print”
What do I know of the reported experiences of Rev. Piper? They are actually true. How do I know and understand this? Because my whole life has been with full awareness of where he went for those 90 minutes, and from where that place came.
On March 15, 1960, I went to my scheduled swimming class in the swimming pool then in the basement of the Sayles-Hill Gymnasium at Carleton College. The event which happened in that swimming pool made a front-page story in the Detroit Lakes (Minnesota) Tribune the next week. The Becker County Historical Society has microfilm copies of the Detroit Lakes Tribune, and a family friend went to the Historical Society, got a printout of the microfilmed front page area containing the story of the swimming accident and mailed it to me, recently.
The headlines and text from that article read:
[begin headlines and text]
NEAR FATAL MISHAP
DL Student ‘Blacks Out” in Carleton College Pool
A Detroit Lakes student at Carleton College, who “blacked out” while swimming underwater at the Carleton poll Tuesday, Mar. 15, is expected to be brought home this week to convalesce.
Brian Harris, 20, son of Rev. and Mrs. Emerson Harris, was the victim of a near-fatal mishap during a swimming class.
He was taken from the pool about 2 p. m. by a lifeguard and remained in a coma until after midnight.
During the entire time in the coma, he apparently thought he was swimming andis suffering from complete physical exhaustion.
His lungs were filled with water when he was taken from the pool. It is not known how long he was underwater.
Brian was an adept underwater swimmer and could swim about 120 feet without coming up for air.
It is thought he was probably “hyper-ventilated” or had gulped too much air before making an attempt to swim the 60-foot Carleton college pool.
Rev. and Mrs. Harris were called to Northfield and returned home later in the week.
They expect to Brian back home sometime this week.
A junior at Carleton, Brian is majoring in physics. He is a graduate of the Detroit Lakes high school.
He will drop out of school for the remainder of the year and hopes to return in the fall.
Rev. Harris is pastor of the Congregational church here.
[end headlines and text]
As is common in journalism, that article contains error. I had taken no water into my lungs, which happens in some drowning situations. I regularly swam the three lengths of the pool while remaining underwater. That is approaching the realm of sponge and pearl divers in the days before scuba. I was in the process of another effort of doing three lengths of the pool, doing so with full Red Cross Water Safety Instructor supervision.
Carleton did a thorough investigation of that event; it will not do for college students to drown in a properly supervised, mandatory physical education class. Carleton then required three full years of physical education classes.
When I returned, the college counselor, Dr. Joseph Havens, told me that no one in the class remembered my being in the class until after my body was found on the bottom of the pool after all the other students had left the pool. No one missed me, no one had any awareness of my having come to the class, showered, and entered the pool, until after my body was discovered on the bottom of the pool, about half way along the length of the pool.
One of my roommates was then a biology major who had done summer work in a hospital, and someone went to find him to tell him of my situation. He went as fast as he safely could to the gymnasium building, and, as the college physician’s office was on the main floor of that building, encountered the college nurse, carrying a tray with a syringe. He asked the nurse where I was and the nurse told him that I was where she was going. The syringe contained epinephrine (adrenalin).
When my roommate got to where my body was, he observed it to be deeply cyanotic in the manner of a person dead for a while. My heart was not beating and I was not breathing. As what I understand was the last remaining effort, the physician injected the epinephrine directly into my unbeating heart. And it began to beat, and my body reflexively coughed up a little water and a little of my lunch, and began breathing.
My body had been put on a metal table for the resuscitation effort, and, as I began to breathe, my body began some reflexive movements, and, as my roommate later told me, the physician asked people to restrain me so I would not fall off the table. Because my brain was barely beginning to return to useful function, the effect of being so restrained activated an afferent-efferent reflex pathway and that led to the mistaken notion interpreted as my “thinking” I was swimming. The Carleton college “campus police officer, Hans, had been awakened and summoned to the pool to help. He weighed more than 250 poinds, as I recall, and my roommate told me that, while Hans was holding my ankles as I was lying on my back on that table, I lifted Hans off the floor as I activated my leg muscles. When the people who were holding me down became too exhausted to continue much longer to hold me on the table, someone got some wrestling mats and I was placed on them and almost immediately stopped resisting being held down because I was no longer being held down.
Eyewitness reports, as made available to me, rule out my having not been breathing for less than 35 minutes, and I had been underwater in warm water, so that near-freezing water survival process was not available to me.
What do I remember of the time my body was on the bottom of that pool? I was as though in the immediate presence of all the power there will ever be.
I was not where Rev. reported he was. I was not where the people whose stories have been told by Dr. Raymond Moody were. I was where it was as though all the “seven heavens” and all else were visible below me. From where I was, I could plainly see that the night journey and the night ascension of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon us, were absolutely real and true.
Every religious tradition is of what has been made, is being made and has not been made. No religious tradition is inherently superior or inferior to any other religious tradition. Any contrary notion is of religious error. Every religious tradition is true in the sense of having both what is true and what is true error as its structure and function.
To the best of my discernment, existence has yet been able to give existence to one ordinary, in no way special or exceptional, person with the necessary form of autism required to be able to survive the life given to me. Had I been given to be able to think in words, the complexity of my life would have been impossible to accept, for words, as connotation, are of a world infinitely too small to accommodate the events of my actual life.
I find I have been given to carry my share of the real Balm of Gilead, and to carry more than enough for everyone, and, it having been given to me for free, it is available for free to whosoever is willing and able to accept it.
I live it. I have always lived it. And I am an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person, neither more nor less special or exceptional than is anyone else. I bring with me to share nothing harmful.
the intent, in surgery, is not harm or injury.
the intent, in surgery, is to return the body to a state of health following something that is causing harm or injury. [unless you are looking at inflating boobs or something of that ilk which is another conversation altogether…]
Chan says; “What do you do if there is no God? Then what? Does that mean there are no standards for human behaviour without a God to moderate?”
We have laws and rules of conduct. Where no other people are involved circumstances don’t generally warrant them although some behaviors are detrimental even if just 1 person is involved.
Also; “So Hitler wasnt good or bad, right or wrong, evil or not? He was just some guy that did what he did?”
Hitler was acting with intent to inflict harm, damage, death and more….and he certainly did think himself ‘RIGHT’!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZZsU7DF1c8&w=480&h=390]
Woosty:
Surgery is a controlled injury to the body. So harm is done and why I imagine doctors always tell you there is risk.
So I am not sure why you are posting definitions.
in·ju·ry
noun \ˈinj-rē, ˈin-jə-\
plural in·ju·ries
Definition of INJURY
1
a : an act that damages or hurts : wrong b : violation of another’s rights for which the law allows an action to recover damages
2
: hurt, damage, or loss sustained
harm
noun \ˈhärm\
Definition of HARM
1
: physical or mental damage : injury
2
: mischief, hurt
See harm defined for English-language learners »
Examples of HARM
1. They threatened him with bodily harm.
2. The scandal has done irreparable harm to his reputation.
3. She’ll do anything to protect her children from harm.
4. They have suffered serious physical harm.
5. These new regulations could cause lasting harm to small businesses.
Origin of HARM
Middle English, from Old English hearm; akin to Old High German harm injury, Old Church Slavic sramŭ shame
First Known Use: before 12th century
Woosty:
“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.”
Surgery is a controlled injury to your body. And as such causes harm.
As far as good and evil? It is isnt hard to determine and you dont need to be God to determine good/evil and right/wrong.
What do you do if there is no God? Then what? Does that mean there are no standards for human behaviour without a God to moderate?
So Hitler wasnt good or bad, right or wrong, evil or not? He was just some guy that did what he did?
Movie … what movie … so I scroll up and up and find mespo’s dramatic scene … list … what list … so I scroll up and up and up … oh brother … how did I miss all this
… love scene?! … who awaits the devastated lawyer under that scarlet, violet, and aureolin sky …
Mespo,
Smart answer!! See you tomorrow.
rafflaw:
At may age, PG-13.
Mespo,
Will it be rated R or NC-17?
HenMan:
Just wait for the love scene!!
A University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Ph.D. professor of social change and development, I, and a number of other qualified folks worked for some years on the value of system dyamics methods for social problems of otherwise intractable complexity.
I pointed to that Wikipedia page as an illustration of what system dynamics is as a rigorous science method which is also applicable to non-rigorous systems.
I keep mentioning that the human brain operates purely according to the laws of biophysics and therefore all it does is according to the laws of biophysics. This aspect of my work is, by conventional notions of biophysics, supposedly millenia in the future. I use methods which are testable and verifiable yet which are vastly too complex for numerical analytic methodologies, and I am doing them now. It may be wise to model the human brain as a biophysical quantum computer of indescribable complexity.
Yes, I am aware of IBM’s Watson…
Brian,
Happy 36th anniversary! I hope you have 36 more.
That’s the first Wiki article I’ve seen w/animation. 🙂
baffling nonlinearity…I like this.
Aren’t you comparing apples and oranges though when examining machinated systems (robotics) with human populated systems ie: Law?
especially since there is absolutely no-way to identify (never mind test) all the variant points in a human populated system?
RE: HenMan, February 8, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Back to the original thread topic?
I suppose the Iowa Legislature is having problems with Zach’s parents actually getting married:
Wedding Officiator, “I now pronounce you woman and and wife.”
or
“I now pronounce you wife and wife.”
or
“I now pronounce you woman and woman.”
No wonder the Iowa Legislature is doing what it is doing…
Oh. Sorry.
That word, “pronouncements” got to me.
A wedding, the one officiating says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Ever hear that said at a wedding?
Ever hear it said, “I now pronounce you woman and husband”?
How come the first version may be less jarring than the second?
I am sensitive to many aspects of society which I find hint of abuse or stigma or prejudice or denigration.
I am more sensitive yet, methinks, to kindness, respect, and decency — I love them beyond measure. (And people even more)