‘How can you possibly say that family breakdown hurts children?’ he spat out at me.

‘The worst damage to a child is always done by the traditional nuclear family!’

I could only gaze at him, defeated by the stupendous shallowness of such an attitude.

The ones who were the most aggressive and offended, I noticed, were those who had walked out on their families or were cheating on their spouses.

This revealed another sad truth about the Left. What matters to them above all is that they are seen to be virtuous and compassionate. They simply cannot deal with the possibility that they might not be.

They deal with any such suggestion not by facing up to any harm they may be doing, but by shutting down the argument altogether.

That’s because the banner behind which they march is not altruism, as they kid themselves. It is narcissism.

It was increasingly clear that the Left, the movement whose goal was to create a better society, had lost the moral plot — and not just over the family. It embraced the doctrine that all lifestyles were equal and none could be deemed to be better than any other.