Arts & Entertainment
‘That kid from YouTube’
Young Iowan releases a book about growing up with his ‘Two Moms’
Zach Wahls (Photo courtesy Lambda Legal)
You know him as “That kid from YouTube,” but the now 20-year-old loving son of two moms, Zach Wahls hopes he will soon be “That kid from the New York Times Best Seller” list.
“We’re all keeping our fingers crossed — it would be great to be a New York Times best selling author before I can legally have a drink to celebrate that fact,” says former Eagle Scout Wahls about his two-week-old memoir “My Two Moms,” which has been in or near the Amazon top 100 best sellers all week.
A major boost for Wahl’s book came last week with his April 30 appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” on Comedy Central, which caused his book about being raised with Iowa values by a committed lesbian couple to jump up the Amazon’s 22nd spot.
Before he was on the “Daily Show” or Ellen DeGeneres, Wahls was a viral video sensation. Not because he did a weird impression or blew something up, but because he gave an incredible, moving testimony before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, which was considering sending to Iowans a Constitutional amendment that would undo a state Supreme Court decision to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.
In his testimony, Wahls discussed his excellent grades and outstanding athletic achievements, opening his own business, studying engineering at the University of Iowa and his time in the Scouts where his mother Terry, whom he calls “short mom,” was a den mother, while “tall mom” Jackie helped out with the Cub Scouts.
“If I was your son, Mr. Chairman, I believe I would make you very proud,” Wahls says in one memorable moment of the video.
But this all-American boy — who says he can’t drink, but does enjoy a cigar every once in a while, and would like to celebrate the success of his book with one if he makes the Times list — is now turning his 15 minutes of fame into a career of advocacy.
His book chronicles the struggles his family faced over the years — such as mother Terry’s struggle with M.S. — and the values that kept them together.
On the phone from Asheville, N.C., on Monday, the day before the vote on Amendment One, he has a lot to say.
WASHINGTON BLADE: The book is organized in an unusual way. Why?
ZACH WAHLS: The book has 14 chapters and two appendices. The first chapter is “Be Prepared,” which is the Boy Scouts’ motto, and the last chapter is “Do a Good Turn Daily,” which is the Scouts’ slogan. And the middle 12 chapters are named and oriented after and on a tenant of the scout law. And the scout law is a scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
Each chapter is an examination of that value, and how I learned it from my moms first, and how I learned it from the Boy Scouts, what it means to me, and what it means to the LGBT community in general.
BLADE: What was the “Daily Show” experience like?
WAHLS: It was the seven coolest minutes of my life.
And Jon, actually — unlike the host of literally every single other show — actually came to the green room backstage before the show and we had a nice little conversation. It was very clear that he had read the book, it was clear that he enjoyed the book and we just had a great little conversation.
I was standing in the green room, and what he does is that he starts talking very loudly as he’s walking toward you down the hall, so you can hear him coming, and he knows that you can hear him coming.
He’s just such a classy guy. Just 100 percent pure class.
I went to the rally to restore sanity last year, and it was the first time I’d ever ridden a Greyhound, actually. Like 24 hours on a Greyhound from Iowa to D.C. to the rally, and I’ve been watching the show since I was like 10. It was an amazing moment.
My moms and my sister were there, they had a great time too. It was great for sure.
BLADE: You seemed very confident and calm. Were you nervous?
WAHLS: Well he came backstage before, and that helped a lot. I was like almost about to have a nervous breakdown when he actually walked into the room. So that would have been what I was experiencing when I walked on stage had he not done that. So that was useful.
It was definitely a high stakes seven minutes. We managed to have a conversation and have a great time, and it was a blast.
But they told me before I went on, don’t make any jokes, and I kept trying not to.
BLADE: But you did! You did make a joke, and it landed well, the audience laughed!
WAHLS: I was having so much fun, I couldn’t help myself.
BLADE: What is the key to changing minds on the issue of rights for LGBT people?
WAHLS: The single most important task is continuing to systematically dismantle this myth of choice.
I think that’s why the YouTube video was so successful. I mean I never come out in the video and say I’m straight — and I’m hesitant to come to conclusions, because that’s something we shouldn’t do — but I think it is fairly clear in the video that I am a flaming straight man. So I think that the single most important development in any person’s movement on the continuum of opposition to LGBT rights to support for LGBT rights is the understanding that sexual orientation is not a choice. It is a pervasive misconception, and in many cases a pervasive lie that unfortunately many Americans do believe to be true.
But when you see people move beyond that misconception, it becomes very difficult for them to believe subsequently that homosexuality is immoral. Because if it’s not a choice, how could it be immoral? It’s much like historically saying someone is immoral or less than simply because of the color of their skin or the organs between their legs.
It used to be the belief that women were subservient to men and that blacks where inferior to whites, and that’s why — when it came to women’s suffrage or civil rights in the sixties — you had to address the underlying discrimination and the underlying beliefs before you could have the political solution that guaranteed equal rights, and that’s what we’re seeing here as well.
BLADE: One problem the LGBT movement often has with allies is commitment. Polling shows most Americans are with the LGBT activists on the big issues like employment, housing, benefits and even equal marriage is polling over 50 percent nationwide, but that doesn’t mean that supporters bother to leave the house to go vote for our rights in a special election like North Carolina’s. How do we inspire more allies to action?
WAHLS: To be clear, I don’t consider myself an ally. I might be straight cisgender man, but in my mind, I am a member of the LGBT community.
I know the last thing that anyone wants is to add another letter to the acronym, but we need to make sure as a movement we’re making a place for what we call “queer-spawn” to function and to be part of the community.
Because even though I’m not gay, I do know what its like to be hated for who I am. And I do know what its like to be in the closet, and like every other member of the LGBT community, I did not have a choice in this. I was born into this movement. I want to be explicitly clear first of all.
These fights affect me, they affect my family.
Now my best friend Nick, a straight guy, he’s an ally.
In terms of how we can have an upgraded commitment from straight allies, the fact is that if you look at the straight community, generally, there is a lot of excitement. And its not just support but excitement on this issue, because I think — in liberal politics generally — this is one of the few issues across the country in which we are not just standing our ground, but actually advancing as a progressive community.
Gay people can’t win this alone though. There aren’t enough people in the LGBT community itself to win this on their own. So in terms of what strategies are most effective? I think that making sure that you are illustrating these personal connections and engaging in this relationship building. Obviously, I come from a somewhat biased point of view, but if you have a close family member or a close friend who is openly LGBT, not only are you more likely to support the issue, but you’re more likely to act as well.
BLADE: There are lots of heartfelt YouTube videos out there with people explaining why LGBT rights matter. Why did yours blow up so big?
WAHLS: I know, its kind of crazy! Well, I think there are two factors. First is that it disrupted some expectations. When you think of whatever that stereotype of two women raising a kid is, a clean cut engineering student, Eagle Scout, entrepreneur — from Iowa to boot — probably isn’t that stereotype. And I think people enjoy seeing those stereotypes getting broken down.
I think more importantly and fundamentally, in that video, I hope you really do see me display my love for and commitment to my family. And I think it reminded a lot of people of their own love and their own commitment that they feel for their families. And I think that was really what struck home. The confidence, the passion, and at the end of the day, the love that was driving through.
BLADE: After three years of equal marriage, what are attitudes like across Iowa today on the issue of same-sex marriage?
WAHLS: Actually, The Onion had a great article, when marriage became legal, and the headline was “Hell opens up and swallows Davenport Iowa.” Obviously it was satire. The sky didn’t fall. Divorce rates are falling, straight people are still marrying straight people. They aren’t catching the gay. 92 percent of Iowans feel that they have not been affected by the Supreme Court ruling in any major way and 56 percent of Iowans oppose a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court decision [that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples in Iowa].
It’s important to note that there is still a small disconnect between those who support same-sex marriage and those who would oppose its repeal. I think that this speaks to the Iowan ethos, which is the notion of “live and let live.” Even though they may not necessarily support same-sex marriage, they aren’t willing to take it away from couples like my parents.
BLADE: Until your video went viral on YouTube, yours was pretty much a quiet, average all-American family. How have your mothers handled all of the extra attention?
WAHLS: My moms have handled it really about as well as you can expect mothers to handle this kind of thing. It was definitely hard at some points for them. They see, obviously a lot of potential when you’re in the limelight to come under very sharp criticism and that happened.
There was a conservative radio host in Iowa who spent 20 minutes of his show going through my speech line by line by line accusing me of all kinds of rhetorical black magic. He seems to think I’m some kind of mastermind or something, which is quite flattering. But my moms hear that, and their protective instincts kick in, definitely.
They’ve been overwhelmingly proud, no doubt about it, but their primary concern is my safety. But they know I’m a grown man, I can handle myself — more often than not — so they’re mostly proud.
Although I do spend a lot less time at home, so I don’t see them or my sister nearly as frequently as I used to. And we’re all a little disappointed about that. My sister and I were both looking forward to the Avengers movie together for a long time, and she caved and saw it with “short mom,” which I was a little upset about. But I understand. I guess. [laughs]
Unlike her, I’m willing to wait til I get home to see it.
A protest was held outside of the White House on Saturday following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. Across the Potomac, picketers held signs calling for “Justice for Renee” in Tysons, Va.
“ICE Out For Good” demonstrations were held in cities and towns across the country, according to multiple reports. A march was held yesterday in Washington, D.C., as the Blade reported. Further demonstrations are planned for tomorrow.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Books
Feminist fiction fans will love ‘Bog Queen’
A wonderful tale of druids, warriors, scheming kings, and a scientist
‘Bog Queen’
By Anna North
c.2025, Bloomsbury
$28.99/288 pages
Consider: lost and found.
The first one is miserable – whatever you need or want is gone, maybe for good. The second one can be joyful, a celebration of great relief and a reminder to look in the same spot next time you need that which you first lost. Loss hurts. But as in the new novel, “Bog Queen” by Anna North, discovery isn’t always without pain.
He’d always stuck to the story.
In 1961, or so he claimed, Isabel Navarro argued with her husband, as they had many times. At one point, she stalked out. Done. Gone, but there was always doubt – and now it seemed he’d been lying for decades: when peat cutters discovered the body of a young woman near his home in northwest England, Navarro finally admitted that he’d killed Isabel and dumped her corpse into a bog.
Officials prepared to charge him.
But again, that doubt. The body, as forensic anthropologist Agnes Lundstrom discovered rather quickly, was not that of Isabel. This bog woman had nearly healed wounds and her head showed old skull fractures. Her skin glowed yellow from decaying moss that her body had steeped in. No, the corpse in the bog was not from a half-century ago.
She was roughly 2,000 years old.
But who was the woman from the bog? Knowing more about her would’ve been a nice distraction for Agnes; she’d left America to move to England, left her father and a man she might have loved once, with the hope that her life could be different. She disliked solitude but she felt awkward around people, including the environmental activists, politicians, and others surrounding the discovery of the Iron Age corpse.
Was the woman beloved? Agnes could tell that she’d obviously been well cared-for, and relatively healthy despite the injuries she’d sustained. If there were any artifacts left in the bog, Agnes would have the answers she wanted. If only Isabel’s family, the activists, and authorities could come together and grant her more time.
Fortunately, that’s what you get inside “Bog Queen”: time, spanning from the Iron Age and the story of a young, inexperienced druid who’s hoping to forge ties with a southern kingdom; to 2018, the year in which the modern portion of this book is set.
Yes, you get both.
Yes, you’ll devour them.
Taking parts of a true story, author Anna North spins a wonderful tale of druids, vengeful warriors, scheming kings, and a scientist who’s as much of a genius as she is a nerd. The tale of the two women swings back and forth between chapters and eras, mixed with female strength and twenty-first century concerns. Even better, these perfectly mixed parts are occasionally joined by a third entity that adds a delicious note of darkness, as if whatever happens can be erased in a moment.
Nah, don’t even think about resisting.
If you’re a fan of feminist fiction, science, or novels featuring kings, druids, and Celtic history, don’t wait. “Bog Queen” is your book. Look. You’ll be glad you found it.
Movies
A Shakespearean tragedy comes to life in exquisite ‘Hamnet’
Chloe Zhao’s devastating movie a touchstone for the ages
For every person who adores Shakespeare, there are probably a dozen more who wonder why.
We get it; his plays and poems, composed in a past when the predominant worldview was built around beliefs and ideologies that now feel as antiquated as the blend of poetry and prose in which he wrote them, can easily feel tied to social mores that are in direct opposition to our own, often reflecting the classist, sexist, and racist patriarchal dogma that continues to plague our world today. Why, then, should we still be so enthralled with him?
The answer to that question might be more eloquently expressed by Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” – now in wide release and already a winner in this year’s barely begun awards season – than through any explanation we could offer.
Adapted from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell (who co-wrote the screenplay with Zhao), it focuses its narrative on the relationship between Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), who meet when the future playwright – working to pay off a debt for his abusive father – is still just a tutor helping the children of well-to-do families learn Latin. Enamored from afar at first sight, he woos his way into her life, and, convincing both of their families to approve the match (after she becomes pregnant with their first child), becomes her husband. More children follow – including Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), a “surprise” twin boy to their second daughter – but, recognizing Will’s passion for writing and his frustration at being unable to follow it, Agnes encourages him to travel to London in order to immerse himself in his ambitions.
As the years go by, Agnes – aided by her mother-in-law (Emily Watson) and guided by the nature-centric pagan wisdom of her own deceased mother – raises the children while her husband, miles away, builds a successful career as the city’s most popular playwright. But when an outbreak of bubonic plague results in the death of 11-year-old Hamnet in Will’s absence, an emotional wedge is driven between them – especially when Agnes receives word that her husband’s latest play, titled “Hamlet,” an interchangeable equivalent to the name of their dead son, is about to debut on the London stage.
There is nothing, save the bare details of circumstance around the Shakespeare family, that can be called factual about the narrative told in “Hamnet.” Records of Shakespeare’s private life are sparse and short on context, largely limited to civic notations of fact – birth, marriage, and death announcements, legal documents, and other general records – that leave plenty of space in which to speculate about the personal nuance such mundane details might imply. What is known is that the Shakespeares lost their son, probably to plague, and that “Hamlet” – a play dominated by expressions of grief and existential musings about life and death – was written over the course of the next five years. Shakespearean scholars have filled in the blanks, and it’s hard to argue with their assumptions about the influence young Hamnet’s tragic death likely had over the creation of his father’s masterwork. What human being would not be haunted by such an event, and how could any artist could avoid channeling its impact into their work, not just for a time but for forever after?
In their screenplay, O’Farrell and Zhao imagine an Agnes Shakespeare (most records refer to her as “Anne” but her father’s will uses the name “Agnes”) who stands apart from the conventions of her town, born of a “wild woman” in the woods and raised in ancient traditions of mysticism and nature magic before being adopted into her well-off family, who presents a worthy match and an intellectual equal for the brilliantly passionate creator responsible for some of Western Civilization’s most enduring tales. They imagine a courtship that would have defied the customs of the time and a relationship that feels almost modern, grounded in a love and mutual respect that’s a far cry from most popular notions of what a 16th-century marriage might look like. More than that, they imagine that the devastating loss of a child – even in a time when the mortality rate for children was high – might create a rift between two parents who can only process their grief alone. And despite the fact that almost none of what O’Farrell and Zhao present to us can be seen, at best, as anything other than informed speculation, it all feels devastatingly true.
That’s the quality that “Hamnet” shares with the ever-popular Will Shakespeare; though it takes us into a past that feels as alien to us as if it took place upon a different planet, it evokes a connection to the simple experience of being human, which cuts through the differences in context. Just as the kings, heroes, and fools of Shakespeare’s plays express and embody the same emotional experiences that shape our own mundane modern lives, the film’s portrayal of these two real-life people torn apart by personal tragedy speaks directly to our own shared sense of loss – and it does so with an eloquence that, like Shakespeare’s, emerges from the story to make it feel as palpable as if their grief was our own.
Yes, the writing and direction – each bringing a powerfully feminine “voice” to the story – are key to the emotional impact of “Hamnet,” but it’s the performances of its stars that carry it to us. Mescal, once more proving himself a master at embodying the kind of vulnerable masculine tenderness that’s capable of melting our hearts, gives us an accessible Shakespeare, driven perhaps by a spark of genius yet deeply grounded in the tangible humanity that underscores the “everyman” sensibility that informs the man’s plays. But it’s Buckley’s movie, by a wide margin, and her bold, fierce, and deeply affecting performance gives voice to a powerful grief, a cry against the injustice and cruelty of what we fumblingly call “fate” that resonates deep within us and carries our own grief, over losses we’ve had and losses we know are yet to come, along with her on the journey to catharsis.
That’s the word – “catharsis” – that defines why Shakespeare (and by extension, “Hamnet”) still holds such power over the imagination of our human race all these centuries later. The circumstantial details of his stories, wrapped up in ancient ideologies that still haunt our cultural imagination, fall away in the face of the raw expression of humanity to which his characters give voice. When Hamlet asks “to be or not to be?,” he is not an old-world Danish Prince contemplating revenge against a traitor who murdered his father; he is Shakespeare himself, pondering the essential mystery of life and death, and he is us, too.
Likewise, the Agnes Shakespeare of “Hamnet” (masterfully enacted by Buckley) embodies all our own sorrows – past and future, real and imagined – and connects them to the well of human emotion from which we all must drink; it’s more powerful than we expect, and more cleansing than we imagine, and it makes Zhao’s exquisitely devastating movie into a touchstone for the ages.
We can’t presume to speak for Shakespeare, but we are pretty sure he would be pleased.
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