Gay and bisexual parenting

A really interesting article here by a bisexual American academic and father who was brought up by his mother and a lesbian partner:

Many have dismissed my story with four simple words: “But you are conservative.” Yes, I am. How did I get that way? I moved to the right wing because I lived in precisely the kind of anti-normative, marginalized, and oppressed identity environment that the left celebrates: I am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I’m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don’t actually help people in those conditions. Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn’t be judgmental about sex. In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love. The left understands none of that. That’s why I am conservative.

Whatever your final views, the story emphasizes the way that modern narratives are crowding out more nuanced discussion of less neat realities and their consequences.

(The Regnerus study referred to in the article is a recent American study that suggests that homosexual parenting leads to less favourable outcomes for children. (Peter Ould chews over the results of that survey here. In short, it raises questions about some of the easy assumptions that the sexuality of parents makes no difference to the welfare of children and highlights some of the inadequacies of previous studies.) )

(H/T 'Crude' in Ed Feser's combox)