(It’s not President Obama or a GOP candidate)

The eloquent and impassioned argument by 19-year-old Zach Wahls in favor of gender segregation in marriage is the most popular YouTube political video of the year. Zach spoke from experience; he was raised by two “mothers” who have same-sex attraction.

Boston.com reports that the young engineering student’s testimony in the Iowa House Judiciary Committee in favor of same-sex marriage generated the most views of any political video, topping President Obama’s address to the White House Correspondents’ Association in April and Rick Perry’s campaign ad which came in second and third respectively in the YouTube rankings.

Zach is so well spoken, he makes absent fathers, single-gender parent households, and artificial insemination sound downright normal.

The video earned him a spot on TV. Ellen DeGeneres marveled to him, “You’re a straight man raised by two women.” (Did she expect him to come out gay?)

His mother decided to deny him a relationship with his dad; at least she had the good sense to engineer some good male role models through the Boy Scouts. Zach is an Eagle Scout, no small achievement.

But I wonder … who is his father? And does Zach, like many donor-conceived children, wonder about his dad? How did he and his “normal” family spend Father’s Day every year?

The question isn’t: Can two women raise a child? The question is: Why does this dedicated young man not deserve his father?

And if Zach decides to become a dad himself, will he follow in his father’s footsteps? Anonymous and absent? Or will he choose to marry a young lady and become a father in the full meaning of the word? Loving his wife and actually having a relationship with his children?

He raves about fatherless households now. What he will choose in the future? Gender-segregated marriage or gender-integrated marriage?

I sure hope he takes a different path from what his mother and father chose. Zach Wahls has so much more to offer a family than a specimen cup of sperm.

Frances Kelly lives in Vermont and writes about gender issues at Homegriddle.