Editorial

ploughs a furrow through the networks of ‘kinship ’ uncovering a fertile mixture of blood, choice and cultural matrices that creates and constrains lesbian and gay family lives. Alongside this research, others have cultivated an exciting field of literature celebrating ‘families of choice ’ and reflecting stories of ingenuity and creativity in the face of the tyranny of heterosexual normativity pervasive in family policy and politics. In Same Sex Intimacies, Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan (2001) map out three kinds of stories that can be told by non-heterosexuals about parenting. The first set of stories, of impossibilities, are told by those who, because they are of a particular gener-ation, geographical location or lack access to community knowledges (Weeks et al., 2001) have understood that their non-heterosexual identity precludes parenting. Those telling the second kind of stories, of opportunities, became parents in a heterosexual context. On coming out they have been able to tap into available social networks and legal support when necessary to estab-lish their claim to live as parents who are non-heterosexual. This has bee