I'm not sure what those authentic conservative values are supposed to be, though. Your response is sensible and pro-family, but does that make it conservative? In the view I've worked out in my series on conservatism, modern conservatism ends up being anti-humanistic social Darwinism. That's what conservative policies entail, regardless of the rhetoric used to defend or to obfuscate them.

There's also a neutral, non-political sense of conservatism, which is just a bias in favour of the status quo when that normal condition isn't horrific. We're all conservative in weighing options rationally and preferring what's presently satisfying to a risky gamble on a dubious alternative.

https://medium.com/grim-tidings/telling-the-brutal-truth-about-conservatism-89984745f17?sk=174085419fe90365a3544149dc494c58