Early this month, one of my best friends from high school in Iowa City, Zach Wahls, got a taste of fame as a video of his speech on gay marriage to the Iowa House of Representatives spread across the internet.
Though I've had the privilege of listening to Zach's rhetoric since childhood, the only reason he is now reaching a national audience is due to the powerful forces of social media, supportive bloggers, and YouTube.
National TV networks and major online newspapers like the Economist, the Huffington Post, and AOL picked up the video of his speech and the rest was history.
His testimony to the legislature might not have been able to instantly convince the politicians to vote against the bill to revoke the legality of gay marriage in Iowa, but the media ripple effect his speech, and others like it, have had since the vote might influence how such bills are approached in the future in my home state.
He now has a book deal and came to L.A. to do more talk-show interviews last week.
He stayed with me, though, while he was here; It's nice he remembers the little people. :)
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