"David Blankenhorn" is the founder and president of the Institute for American Values and the author of Fatherless America and The Future of Marriage. A noted figure in the campaign against same-sex marriage in the United States, his position changed and he voiced support of legalizing same-sex marriage in June 2012.

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We've gone from debunking heroes to needing heroes, ... We're in a time of such danger and such physical vulnerability, and we need to be protected by the strong and the brave.

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We have a need for heroes as a species, you know. That is one of the distinguishing traits of humans. We have a need to have an idealized sense of who we are at our best.

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Up until September 11, we did live in an antiheroic age, ... Heroes were there to be debunked, criticized, made human, brought down to earth.

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We're just grateful to them in some real and intense way. Here in New York, people, they go up to these guys at the firehouses and in the streets, and they just want to say how grateful they are.

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They are heroes because they protect us, you know? They go in where people are in danger, and they save their lives.

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