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This week's Newsweek reproduces today's preferred method of journalism on homosexuals: first-person gay narratives, hermetically sealed from any troublesome opposition. In a long piece entitled “Meet My Real Modern Family,” author Andrew Solomon reports on how he and his lover have each fathered two children, although only one of them lives with them. Solomon unsurprisingly expresses pride and demands respect: “We have earned the familial relationships into which others stumble, and there is a veteran’s peace in our mutual devotion.” Religious people only surface briefly in their typical role, as villains: John and I sent out birth announcements that included a picture of us with George. One of John’s cousins returned it with a note that said, “Your lifestyle is against our Christian values. We wish to have no further contact.” Some people scorn the idea of calling five adults and four children in three states a family, or believe that the existence of our family undermines theirs. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones. I espouse reproductive libertarianism, and would propose that when everyone has the broadest choice, love itself expands. I would never want to be smug about the affection we all found in one another. It is not a better love than others, but it is another love, and just as species diversity is crucial to sustain the planet, this diversity strengthens the ecosphere of kindness. Newsweek highlighted the line about “reproductive libertarianism,” and never felt compelled by anyone to defend how “love itself expands” when children live without mothers or fathers on a daily basis. Or how children feel when they were conceived in test tubes and placed in the wombs of people like so much laboratory flotsam. This may be “modern.” It's also incredibly artificial. The notion of “sin,” as usual, is completely verboten.