When Zach Wahls was 19, his speech to the Iowa legislature about his two moms helped shift the conversation around marriage equality. Wahls, now a two-term state senator running for U.S. Senate, is marking the speech’s 15th anniversary with a Zoom event next week. I’m one of the speakers, and hope you’ll join us.
Wahls, the first person raised by out LGBTQ parents to hold state legislative office, was a University of Iowa student when he gave his famed speech (which went viral twice), clearly using the skills he learned as a high school state debate champion. He was also an Eagle Scout who later co-founded Scouts for Equality, an organization that helped overturn the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay scouts. He authored a memoir in 2013, My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family, which I highly recommend. In 2014, he co-founded The Rainbow Letters, a now-inactive project that collected and shared the stories of people with LGBTQ parents. He went on to obtain a Master’s degree in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
He’s a sixth-generation Iowan, too, who was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 2018 and is now in his second term. Until recently, he worked as vice president of community investment at GreenState Credit Union, Iowa’s largest independent financial cooperative. He’s an active member of his Unitarian Universalist congregation, and he and his wife, Chloe, welcomed their first son in 2024. You can learn more about him and his Iowa-specific accomplishments and goals at his website.
The event to mark his speech’s 15th anniversary is a grassroots fundraiser for his campaign, but it’s also a celebration of LGBTQ families and of a notable moment in the ongoing fight for LGBTQ equality. I’m honored to be one of the special guests sharing my thoughts on the occasion. My own son was 7 years old when Wahls gave his speech, and is now older than Wahls was then, which makes me realize just how fast time flies—but also how important it is to stop and mark the moments and milestones that have gotten us to where we are today, even as we have more work to do.
Please join us in Celebrating 15 Years of Advocacy With Zach Wahls:
- Wednesday, January 28th, 2026
- 7:00 PM ET / 4:00 PM PT
- Tickets start at $50
- Advance registration is required