Senator Zach Wahls Contact information

Zacharia Wahls, born on July 15, 1991, is an Iowa state senator for the 43rd District, and an American LGBTQ+ activist and author. He is the son of two lesbian women and was conceived using artificial insemination. His biological mother is Terry Wahls, an internal medicine physician.

Zach spent his early years in Marshfield, Wisconsin, and moved to Iowa City, Iowa when he was nine years old. He was raised as a Unitarian Universalist and identifies himself as a member of that church. Having lesbian parents caused occasional problems during his school years when he found it difficult to explain to his peers or found that some of them were forbidden to socialize with him. He was sometimes teased and sometimes bullied because of his parents’ relationship.

In 2004, as an eighth grader, while watching the Republican National Convention on television, he first realized that there was political opposition to the sort of family in which he was raised. In high school, he wrote a series of columns for the school newspaper about being raised by a lesbian couple. He played quarterback on the football team and participated in speech and debate. He graduated from Iowa City West High School in 2009.

He entered the University of Iowa that fall, withdrawing shortly thereafter to promote his book, written with the assistance of Bruce Littlefield. While still a high school senior, following the Iowa Supreme Court decision in Varnum v. Brien that invalidated the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, he wrote an op-ed piece in The Des Moines Register in which he advocated a complete separation of marriage from civil unions, calling for legislation to completely remove government from the marriage process altogether, leaving a religious ceremony to religious institutions, and making civil unions, accessible by any two people, including those of the same sex, the norm for legal benefits.

His mothers married in 2009 following the legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa. Before withdrawing from the University of Iowa, while a college freshman, Wahls started a small peer tutoring company, Iowa City Learns, that offers tutoring services to junior and high school students.

Zach Wahls represents Senate District 43, which includes Coralville, North Liberty, Solon, several Iowa City neighborhoods, and rural northeast Johnson County. Wahls is a sixth-generation Iowan, a longtime resident of the senate district with deep community roots, an Eagle Scout, and an active member of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Coralville. His testimony before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee about growing up with lesbian parents was YouTube’s most-watched political video of 2011.

He has spoken at over 300 events all over Iowa and across America, including a primetime speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention supporting President Barack Obama’s re-election. He is the author of the nationally bestselling memoir My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength and What Makes a Family. Wahls co-founded and served as Executive Director of Scouts for Equality, which successfully led the national campaign to end LGBTQ discrimination in the Boy Scouts of America.

Wahls received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and his master’s degree from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Zach lives with his wife Dr. Chloe Angyal, who is a journalist and author, and their dog Zelda, in Coralville.