Gay Marriage

NEGATIVE ARGUMENTS My opponent has dropped all of his previous points. Now he has made some new ones: [1] Legalizing gay marriage would be great for the economy. irrelevance: Maybe, but that still does not mean that it should be legal. There are other ways to stimulate the economy without legalizing gay marriage. You can’t argue that we should do something just because it creates jobs. Theoretically, if murder were legalized, it might create a lot more jobs for hitmen, but that does not mean that murder should be legalized. [2] There is also an amendment stating there is separation of church and state, so you cannot declare that a marriage is a gift from God. false claim: First of all, the phrase “separation of church and state” is not in an amendment in the constitution. That is a common myth. Look for it. You won’t find it. Those words were contained in a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote fifteen years after the constitution was written, in response to a woman who was concerned that the state was overriding the rights of the church. straw man: I did not argue that marriage is a gift from God. I did not make any religion-based arguments (or any arguments mixing church and state), so this point is irrelevant. [3] Homosexuality is natural. naturalistic fallacy: I agree that homosexuality (and all sexual orientation for that matter) is natural, but that does not mean that it is right, or moral. It is a fallacy to equate what is with what should be. The philosopher David Hume was the first to substantially point this out. Another philosopher, George Moore, also made the point, calling the mistake the “naturalistic fallacy”. We can understand this point with some other examples. Evolutionary sociologists have found that rape is a completely natural phenomenon, but does that mean that rape should be tolerated? No. Just because something is not a choice does not mean it is not wrong. We can distinguish between moral wrong and natural wrong. The fact that homosexuality is not a choice (it is natural) means that it is not a moral wrong, but that does not mean it is not a natural wrong. [4] They are trying to outlaw something that people are born with. confusion: That is not true. No one is trying to outlaw homosexuality. What we are trying to outlaw is homosexual marriage. In other words, the condition is not being opposed, only a legal relationship based on the condition. That’s not the same thing. I’ve never criticized anybody for being gay. I’ve only been critical of gay marriage. [5] Gay marriage will increase the chances for thousands of foster children to gain loving parents and families irrelevance: This is a separate issue: Should gay couples be allowed to adopt? Some argue that every child deserves the right to a mother and a father, so gays should not be allowed to adopt. But asidefrom this, why can’t we just make it so that a couple does not need to be married in order to adopt a child. We can give children a home and family without legitimizing gay marriage. This is not a reason to legalize gay marriage. It is a reason to change adoption laws. POSITIVE ARGUMENTS (FIRST REBUTTAL) [1] reductio ad absurdum The way to ban incestuous, polygamous, and half-bestial marriages is not by passing a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriages. It's by passing a constitutional amendment banning incestuous, polygamous, and half-bestial marriages. straw man: I did not say that by banning gay marriage we can ban incestuous, polygamous, and bestialrelationships. I said that there is no reason to ban some and not others. If you want to legalize some, you have to legalize all. If you want to ban some, then you have to ban them all. Gay marriage supporters have to explain why either a) they should all be legalized (so that gay marriage will be legalized) or b) why only gay marriage should be legalized. My opponent still has not done that. [2] biology We are already in overpopulation in some parts in the world. So, there would be no fear of the human population going extinct. missing the point: I did not say that we would become extinct. I was making the point that heterosexual relationships allow for procreation and hence the continuation of the human race, while homosexual relationships allow for neither, so there is a discrepancy between the two, with the favor going to heterosexual relationships. Overpopulation is irrelevant. The point is that any population at all is allowed by heterosexual relationships but not homosexual ones. [3] imbalance I also argued that in a heterosexual relationship, men and women’s bodies compliment each other, but that is not true in homosexual relationships. There is an imbalance. I applied this to both their genitals, their bodies as wholes, and their spirits. My opponent did not address any of these points. CONCLUSION My opponent dropped his previous points and took up new ones, but these also suffer from errors. He made two rebuttals to some of my arguments, but he attacked something I did not say and argued beside the point, so my arguments still stand. My other positive arguments are without a response and so remain standing too. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume, David Principia Ethica Moore, George Edward http://www.law.cornell.edu...