Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Reader comments closed for the weekend

Posted in:

Illinois
YouTube

Friends, colleagues and above all family remembered the late state Rep. Mark Beaubien of Barrington Hills on Friday, as a man of conscience and integrity whose embrace of people from backgrounds and mindsets very different from his own evolved over time.

“Before he was deified by you all for his tolerance, he was quite an Old Testament father,” Beaubien’s son Mark recalled, evoking a chuckle from those attending the funeral Mass at St. Anne Church in Barrington. […]

The younger Mark Beaubien said it was a wonder to watch his father evolve into a Republican legislator capable of lending support to such untraditional causes as same-sex civil unions and a woman’s right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

A statement on the back of the funeral program said, “If asked why he was one of the few Republican supporters of the Civil Union Bill, he would respond with humility and simplicity that it was simply time and we should all ‘live our own lives and speak our own values.’”

The younger Beaubien said his father died as one of his best friends, describing him as “oppressively affable.”

* Many will remember Mark’s speech on the House floor after Rep. Deb Mell announced her engagement. “Live your own life, speak your own truth”…