When the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote 2600 years ago that “character is fate,” he set the conditions for centuries of intense introspection on the part of perhaps millions of people. What is character? How is it formed? How does it direct one’s life? Are we born with it? Does it grow in us through the direction of wise and loving parents and friends?
Zach Wahls, a sixth generation Iowan, told the Iowa Legislature a few years back when it was contemplating banning same-sex marriage, that “not once” in his l9 years had he “ever been confronted by an individual who realized independently that I was raised by a gay couple. And do you know why?” he asked the legislators.
“Because the sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.”
In his deeply moving book, My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family (Gotham Books, 2012), Wahls tells the story of his inspiring family and of his personal opposition to attempts in Iowa to “codify discrimination into our constitution.”
He tells the Iowa Legislature, “what you’re voting here isn’t to change us. It’s not to change our families. It’s to change how the law views us, how the law treats us.”
Wahls’s character, it seems to me, is deeply American. He detests discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, and unfairness of any kind. Equal justice under law is a truth that Wahls holds sacred.
The mystery of character can never be fully fathomed, but in My Two Moms, Wahls shows us that the parts of his character that are visible to us were forged in a family that is by all standards, but one, as All American as you can get. I know this may sound idealistic to some, and perhaps even mawkish, but Zach Wahls comes from a “good family,” in the old fashioned sense.
His two mothers, the love of their relationship, their sterling values and parenting skills, embraced him and his sister in the kind of caring, open hearted, communicative family setting that fostered the inner strength and certainty it took for him to confront wrongheaded authority bent on maintaining conformity chained in prejudice.
His two mothers – Terry Wahls, MD, and Jackie Reger -- are the kind of parents the American ideal of family admires above all else – parents who live by honorable values themselves, who walk their talk, who give their children all the love and wisdom they have, who take on the responsibility of being role models and builders of character, and who, in Zach Wahls’s case, masterfully and joyfully fulfilled their responsibility.
The picture Wahls gives us of nightly dinner conversations in which this family could explore together joys and troubles, sorrows and excitements, is a story that glows with warmth that so many Americans wish they had had in their lives.
In a country with soaring divorce rates, and living with the horrible normality of domestic abuse, Zach Wahls and his sister Zebby were raised by two parents deeply bonded in love to each other and their children. Zach Wahls is an Eagle Scout, in the best sense of that term. And his mothers guided him to that achievement, and to so much more.
For Zach, the character of his mothers was his fate as well.
Responses to “All American family”