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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-common-family-values/2015/06/10/c93669c6-0fac-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.htmlWhat
I learned from Beau Biden
By E.J. Dionne Jr. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/ej-dionne-jr> Opinion
writer June 10 at 8:22 PM
<ejdionne@washpost.com?subject=Reader%20feedback%20for%20%27What%20I%20learned%20from%20Beau%20Biden%27>

Between now and the 2016 election, we need to have a searching national
debate over family ­values.

It will not be about whether we as a country are for them. We are. What’s
required is a grounded and candid discussion about what those words
actually mean.

Note that I did not follow the convention of putting quotation marks around
family values. That punctuation is appropriate only when the phrase is
defined in a narrow, partisan way, aimed at claiming that some large number
of Americans don’t believe in family responsibility or love.

I will be haunted for a long time by Saturday’s funeral
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/06/as-the-vice-presidents-family-mourns-obama-to-deliver-beau-bidens-eulogy-saturday/>
for Beau Biden
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/05/30/e1ac5a2a-0731-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html>,
the vice president’s son, who died of cancer at the age of 46. I suspect
anyone who watched or listened to the eulogies feels this way, and I hope
especially that staunch social conservatives give some of their attention
to hearing the tributes. Beau Biden’s sister, Ashley, and his brother,
Hunter, spoke with a power and an authenticity about love, devotion and
connection that said more about how irreplaceable family solidarity is than
a thousand speeches or sermons.

And President Obama captured
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/06/president-obamas-eulogy-for-beau-biden/>
rather precisely what family is about when he described what he called “the
Biden family rule.” Its components: “If you have to ask for help, it’s too
late. It meant you were never alone; you don’t even have to ask, because
someone is always there for you when you need them.”

I certainly don’t pretend that social conservatives who experience these
eulogies will suddenly convert to liberalism or be transformed into
supporters of Obama or Joe Biden. What the Biden funeral brought home is
that the feelings and convictions that very nearly all of us — left, right,
center and apolitical — have about the bonds between parents and children
and brothers and sisters, truly transcend our day-to-day arguments. We so
often wage political war around the family that we forget how broadly
shared our reverence for it is.

This helps explain the paradox of the gay marriage issue: Our opinions on
it have changed in large part because of ties of family and friendship. A
Pew Research Center survey
<http://www.people-press.org/2015/06/08/support-for-same-sex-marriage-at-record-high-but-key-segments-remain-opposed/>
released this week found that 57 percent of Americans favor allowing
same-sex marriage, while 39 percent oppose it. Just five years ago, only 42
percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage, while 48 percent opposed
it.

The key to this long-term shift is deeply personal. The number of Americans
who know that someone they care about is gay or lesbian has skyrocketed
over the decades and risen a lot even in recent years. Pew found that the
proportion of Americans who know someone who is homosexual has gone to
88 percent, from 61 percent in 1993. Among those who know many people who
are gay or lesbian, 73 percent support same-sex marriage. Among those who
know no gay men or lesbians, 59 percent are opposed.

These numbers underscore again that so many of the issues related to family
are more complicated (and less about ideology) than the angry, direct-mail
style of discourse we are accustomed to on these matters would ­suggest.

Yet you don’t have to be right-wing to worry that the family in the United
States faces severe stresses and challenges. It would be genuinely useful
if the 2016 campaign focused on practical measures that would help parents
do their jobs.

Discussions of how policies on taxes, child care, family leave, wages and
criminal justice affect the family’s well-being (and specific proposals in
each area) would be so much more constructive than polemics that cast one
part of our population as immoral enemies of family life and the other as
narrow-minded bigots. A politics of recrimination does a profound
disservice to how much all of us care about family.

In 2007, after a Democratic presidential debate, I was approached in the
spin room by Beau Biden, then Delaware’s attorney general. He wanted to
talk about how well his dad performed, and his father had, indeed, done
very well that night on the stage. But Beau Biden was most animated (and
spoke at much greater length) when he turned to describing what an
extraordinary father Joe Biden had been.

This fact about a politician certainly didn’t require anyone to vote for
him. But it always helped explain to me why I feel as I do about Joe Biden
and also why our discussions of family life need to recognize that love and
commitment go way beyond politics. Family is too precious to let it divide
us.

*Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ej-dionne-jr/2011/02/24/ABhJNkM_page.html>,
follow him on Twitter <https://twitter.com/EJDionne> or subscribe to his
updates on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/ejdionne>.*


--

Alexander Snyder Mackler
(302) 598-867