Gay Activist Zach Wahls Announce Run for Public Office

By: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer

IOWA CITY — Gay activist Zach Wahls has announced that he is running for public office after coming on the public stage six years ago in a video defending his lesbian mothers went viral.

Wahls, now 26, first gained his fame for politics arguing and defending the merits of LGBT families such as his to the Iowa House Judiciary Committee. At the time lawmakers were weighing a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage aka marriage equality which was something that had crossed the line for Wahls.

He spoke of being born via artificial insemination and attempted to educate lawmakers to the fact that his family wasn’t much different than most Iowa families.

Wahls’s confident and impassioned speech for someone so young immediately went viral online with now tens of millions of views, he quickly captured the title of the most popular political video on YouTube in 2011.

Plus, Wahls is an Eagle Scout and has long been an advocate for LGBT equality in scouting. In fact Wahls launched his campaign entitled “Scouting for Equality” which helped pave the way for the Boy Scouts of America to drop their ban on LGBT scouts and scout leaders. This of course created a fire storm among religious conservatives however the Boy Scouts stuck by their guns with the help of young men such as Zach Wahls.

Now only that, Wahls made his big stage debut when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention wher he thanked then-President Barack Obama for publicly endorsing marriage equality.

The Iowa City-native is seeking the 37th district Senate seat of fellow Democrat Bob Dvorsky, who announced that he would be retiring next year.

Wahls opponent for the seat will be fellow Democrat and longtime State Department diplomat Janice Weiner in the in the primary.

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