The author looks to be searching for a wider audience for his upcoming book.

Given his past:

In 1970, Epstein wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine called “The Struggle for Sexual Identity,” that was widely criticized for its perceived homophobia, although Harper’s editor Midge Decter defended it as an “elegant and thoughtful account”. Among other things, Epstein wrote, “if I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of the earth, because I consider it a curse, in a literal sense.” He ended the article with

There is much that my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make [me] ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual.[3][4]

The response of gay writers and readers to Epstein’s piece, including a “sit-in” at Harper’s by members of the Gay Activists Alliance, has been identified as a significant turning point in the gay rights movement of the early 1970s.[5][6]

He sounds like a good fit for the Murdoch WSJ.