Prominent pundit and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson apologized this weekend for suggesting that gay people didn’t care about future generations because they couldn’t have children. Ferguson’s comments, intended as a psychohistorical explanation of famous economist John Maynard Keynes’ pro-deficit spending views, provoked a firestorm of criticism — and some defenses on the right, which has a long tradition of bashing Keynes’ economic views on basis of his sexual orientation.

Ferguson’s comments, first reported by Tom Kostigen, came as part of a critique of Keynes’ ideas about responding to economic recessions and depressions at a finance conference in Carlsbad, California. Keynes is the intellectual godfather of the idea that ramping up government spending, usually financed by borrowing, can ameliorate recessions, the theory behind both the New Deal and President Obama’s stimulus. Ferguson, who’s recently been a harsh critic of deficit spending, argued that Keynes could only countenance higher deficits and debt because his sexual orientation meant he had no reason to care about the children that might have to pay the borrowed money back. As Kostigen reports:

Speaking at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., in front of a group of more than 500 financial advisors and investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes’ famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of “poetry” rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive…

Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it’s only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an “effete” member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson’s world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.

Setting aside the utterly wrong, offensive character of Ferguson’s attack, it’s wrong on both biographical and economic grounds. Though it’s obviously hard to make these sorts of judgments about long-dead historical figures, Keynes appeared to be more accurately described as bisexual rather than gay: in a point that goes directly to Ferguson’s accusation, Keynes’ wife’s pregnancy ended in miscarriage.

Moreover, the idea that Keynesian economics is indifferent to future generations is based on one out-of-context quote and an elementary misreading of Keynes’ views about deficit spending. It’s true that Keynes supported borrowing money during recessions, but the point of borrowing was to finance spending that would stimulate a faster economic recovery, which would in the long run both reduce unemployment and deficits. Keynes also believed that, in good economic times, the government should save money so it could have a reserve to spend without needing to borrow too much during recessions. These are hardly the views of an advocate of untrammeled borrowing at the expense of people down the line.

Though Ferguson “deeply and unreservedly” apologized for his comments, it’s not the first time he’s bashed Keynes on the basis of his sexual orientation. His 1999 book The Pity of War suggested Keynes, who was an the time an important adviser for the British Treasury around World War I, let a crush on the German negotiator determine determine his position on the post-war settlement. In the same book, Ferguson cracked that Keynes’ “sex life went into decline” during the war, “perhaps because the boys he liked to pick up in London all joined up.”

Using Keynes’ orientation to dismiss his economic views is a pastime with a long pedigree on the right — a point that some modern conservatives made in defense of Ferguson’s statements. Economic historian Brad DeLong compiled a long list of them — see, for example, neoconservative doyenne Gertrude Himmelfarb’s claim that “Keynes’s famous remark, ‘In the long run we are all dead’, also has an obvious connection with his homosexuality.”

What’s particularly curious about Ferguson’s outburst is that he used to endorse Keynesian views about deficit spending. Though he’s penned many acerbic critiques of the Obama Administration’s stimulus, he used the same Keynesian arguments he now disparages to defend the Bush tax cuts in 2003.

Earlier this week, Michael Reagan, son of the late president, wrote a scathing op-ed comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy, bestiality, and murder. In a tweet, Reagan apologized for the reference to murder, claiming he doesn’t remember it being there. Still, Wednesday night, he sat down with Piers Morgan to defend his other slippery-slope remarks. He doubled down on his comparison with polygamy with the biphobic notion that bi people — who are no less capable of monogamy — would want to marry a male and a female. But one candid comment revealed his true motivations for writing such vitriolic ideas:

I pay attention to what’s being said in courtrooms. These are the questions being asked of those people fighting for gay marriage. So, why aren’t you upset with everybody else? Why are you only upset with me? If I don’t mention those things also, to tell you the truth, you don’t invite me on.

Watch it:

For the record, the word “bestiality” was not mentioned during last week’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, nor was polygamy discussed in any context as a consequence of same-sex marriage. Certainly, if either had come up in a way offensive to gay people, it wouldn’t have required Michael Reagan reiterating them for advocates to call them out.

Legendary music producer Clive Davis has come out as bisexual in his new memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life. The revelation was first reported by Rolling Stone and USA Today, but he expounded on his identity in an interview Monday night with Cynthia McFadden on ABC’s Nightline:

DAVIS: It’s not that the heavens opened up, but I realized in my case the most important thing — I’m relationship-oriented, and I would open my perspective, my life, my emotion, to have a relationship with a man as well as a woman. So when it comes to the pure subject of sex, when our marriage was over, I did through a period of having sex with two different women, and with a male. So for me, this very maligned, misunderstood subject of bisexuality came up.

MCFADDEN: It’s been said that people are either gay, straight, or lying.

DAVIS: Correct I’m not lying, and it exists. For over fifty years, I never had sex with a male. It wasn’t repressed, I had very good sexual relationships with women… I never felt shame, no, I never felt shame. I felt puzzled. The subject of bisexuality really needs much more discussion because the answer is it’s a status that does exist.

Watch the interview:

Davis has been in a relationship with a man for the last seven years, though he keeps his partner’s identity private.

Contrary to skepticism among both gay and straight people, studies have confirmed that bisexuality very much exists. In fact, bi people have experiences unique to their identities, but it’s that doubt in the validity of their identities that creates many challenges, which are often identified as “biphobia.”

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has sunk to a new, disturbing low with his anti-gay statements. In two separate tweets last night, he called for an “Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households.” In one tweet  he was referring to the sad story of Lisa Miller, who, after declaring herself ex-gay, kidnapped her daughter away to Central America to prevent her former partner from having any custody. (She is still being tracked by federal agents as a fugitive of the law.)

In the other tweet, Fischer referred to the testimony of a individual named Robert Oscar Lopez, who blames all of his social problems on being raised by his mom and her lesbian partner. Here’s a sampling:

Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.[...]

Life is hard when you are strange. Even now, I have very few friends and often feel as though I do not understand people because of the unspoken gender cues that everyone around me, even gays raised in traditional homes, takes for granted. Though I am hard-working and a quick learner, I have trouble in professional settings because co-workers find me bizarre.

Perhaps unfamiliar with the concepts of self-fulfilling prophesies and internalized homophobia, this man’s odd testimony seems to attack gay parenting merely because he believes his bisexual mother’s decision to live with a woman made it a struggle for him to identify as bisexual himself. Unlike his mother, his preference seems to be to conform to heteronormative society, and he feels unable to do that because he feels he wasn’t properly conditioned by archaic gender stereotypes. Given the added incentive to defend Mark Regnerus’ “bullshit” faulty study attacking gay parenting, he is clearly trying to pin his panoply of personal problems on his mother (and all same-sex parents as a result.) His story is not a valid representation of anything except his own unique perception of the world.

And yet, Bryan Fischer believes it to be the perfect example of why the children of same-sex parents should be kidnapped away for their protection — that they are the equivalent of slaves who need to be rescued. This is incredibly dangerous rhetoric that has the potential to do great harm. How much destruction could self-declared “Harriet Tubmans” do to same-sex families, motivated by Fischer’s claims? More than ever, the “culture war” is a direct attack on the lives of LGBT and their families.

A new study from the University of Missouri finds that young adults who are bi or who are still exploring their sexuality have a higher propensity to abuse alcohol or engage in other risky behaviors than those who are exclusively straight or gay. Researcher Amelia Talley explained that the stress of biphobia may play a significant role:

TALLEY: Bisexuals and students whose sexual orientation was in flux reported the heaviest drinking and most negative consequences from alcohol use, such as uncontrolled drinking and withdrawal symptoms. Those groups reported drinking to relieve anxiety and depression at higher rates than strictly heterosexual or homosexual individuals. One possible explanation is that people who aren’t either completely heterosexual or homosexual may feel stigmatized by both groups.

Exclusively homosexual and heterosexual persons drank at roughly the same rate and reported drinking to enhance enjoyment of social situations. The other sexual minority groups tended to report more alcohol misuse. This suggests that it may be the stressful process of developing one’s sexual identity that contributes to problematic drinking, just as people in any difficult situation in life may turn to alcohol to alleviate stress.

Numerous other studies have documented that effects of biphobia and the unique challenges that bi people face as a result. The stigma that the bi community faces from both the straight and gay communities is a reminder of how limited society’s understanding of sexuality is in general. Accepting people for who they are is always a healthier choice than forcing them into narrow boxes.