Republican 'family values' are destroying American families

Like the titular character from The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger, child entertainer, educator, and overall perfect person, Ms. Rachel is the honey badger we all need. Ms. Rachel shows what family values should meanShe's just gonna keep on keeping on, despite whatever anyone throws her way. She encourages kindness in an increasingly cruel world and does it with a smile. Recently, Ms. Rachel visited families outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center. She sang with children whose parents had been detained. She listened to families describe what separation had done to them. She carried children's handwritten letters to Washington, hoping that seeing the consequences of public policy through the eyes of actual children might inspire compassion in those responsible for creating them.The effort was probably doomed from the start. But she tried.If the phrase “family values” had not been hijacked and dragged through the mud by one of the most catastrophically corrupt, morally vacant, and transparently greedy movements in American history, one might reasonably conclude that Ms. Rachel embodies what family values are supposed to look like. She comforts frightened children and advocates for their families. She shows concern for vulnerable people. She believes children deserve safety, stability, and love regardless of where they were born or who their parents are. In other words, she behaves exactly the way conservatives spent decades claiming Americans should behave. And yet, the party of family values seems to harbor a surprising amount of hostility toward Ms. Rachel.The long history of conservative family values hypocrisyIn the past, when one used to think of conservative family values, one might conjure up memories of former U.S. Louisiana Senator David Vitter's "original sin" involving escorts and an alleged diaper fetish. Or the time when Dr. George Alan Rekers, cofounder of the highly conservative and vehemently antigay Family Research Council, was photographed