Partisan Pen Pals

Josh Fischel, a liberal who made a hobby out of fact-checking conservative media outlets, found an unlikely pen pal in Esther, a conservative blogger. What he found was that it helped him better understand his own positions out of better understanding of others. For example, on gay marriage:

The question of marriage equality is simple and straightforward to me. To someone like Esther, it is extremely complicated, and that’s obvious in that she won’t divorce the notion of marriage equality from the welfare of children raised by gay parents. I gave her a scenario: would you rather have your kids raised by a straight family member who, with his spouse, had been largely unsuccessful in life — high school drop-out, an addict, abusive, unemployed, etc — or a gay family member who, with his spouse, had achieved far more? Esther replied, “I think that any time you have one type of household that remains stable, you’re going to have better outcomes than someone whose family is rocked by the trauma of breakup, regardless of whether your parents are gay or straight. But kids raised by gay parents will, by definition, lack one gender role model or the other as they mature.”

Reminds me of this deranged experiment.