A Virtue of Queer Kinship: Filial Piety Beyond the Biological Family

Debates about the future of the family often focus on whether the traditional biological family should be defended, reformed, or abolished. Yet the vital role of “chosen family” in queer communities suggests that a more pressing question is how intergenerational relationships are sustained without biological kinship at all. This paper revisits the virtue of filial piety as a framework for addressing that question. Drawing on Confucian virtue ethics, queer studies, and Christian reflection on adoption, I argue that filial piety can be configured as an ethical orientation toward predecessors and elders within communities of shared life. On this account, filial piety names not obedience to biological parents but a cluster of dispositions: gratitude for formative care, fidelity to communities of survival, attention to communal memory, and responsibility for elders. Read in this way, queer kinship practices illuminate how filial piety might guide new forms of family beyond biological descent.