Resolved: Parents ought be banned from forcing minors into ex-gay therapy or conversion practices.

Definitions: When you look at the general definition of ex-gay therapy, it mainly focuses on the reparative therapies dedicated toward chaning sexual orientation. To clarify, what we're focusing on in this debate are the attempts to change sexual orientation.Immorality of therapy: There is a difference between causing pain and suffering to homosexuals and causing pain and suffering to homosexual bashers, and this contradicts the general idea that my opponent puts forth about how one group is not inherently more important than another: it is morally permissible to cause pain and suffering to homosexual bashers. First, there isn't any warrant on the side of the opposition that states that any sort of harm comes to homosexual bashers because of the perpetuation of a mindset of tolerance in the community, just to make that clear. Second, homosexual bashers as a group have inherently done something to cause harm to others with no warrant, making them punishable. Not only that, but my opponent excessively simplifies the argument for sub-point 1a. Ex-gay therapy not only harms the gays who enter and perpetuates a social idea destructive to a population within the community, but it inherently takes advantage of the gays who enter with the use of psychology in a way not meant in accordance with the mission and protocol of psychology research--especially in the matters of sexuality and sexual health. Long-Term Harm: First, I'd like my opponent to tell me exactly where in my citation from the APA did it state that the therapy was not tested thoroughly enough considering that it even spoke about the 80 studies compiled into a 137-page report between 1960-2007. This means that the claim that the therapy itself is generally inefficient is still standing. He talks a bit into the incongruous nature of science and morality and of the pseudo-scientific body, but it really doesn't make sense here. I'm not really understanding what my opponent is saying that because alternatives cannot be excluded, morality is not testable, nor am I understanding the general idea that science cannot be used to determine morality because of the idea that science is testable and morality is not (giving my opponent the benefit of the doubt). Morality requires the evaluation of an action and/or its effects, meaning that something testable is needed in order to determine the evaluation itself anyway. The accrue of discrimination: If my opponent is saying that discrimination will continue if the children go or don't go, this is only proving my argument because it proves the idea that there's no practicality in sending children to ex-gay therapy anyway considering the consequences will be all the same. My case is in no way using discrimination as a standard of morality--although only unfair discrimination is really was is condemnable since there are many forms of discrimination that aren't inherently immoral or at the very least morally permissible, like an employer giving more attention or benefits to those with higher merits. I'm not sure where my opponent got that idea from at all. This is not the main point of my sub-point 1c. This is to further prove the inherent immorality of ex-gay therapy by perpetuating this mindset, furthing proving that the research is inadequate for society at a moral level.Human Rights: My opponent does a lot of prefacing when it comes to his initial arguments, especially when it comes down the argument about taxes. I'm trying to state that coercion in this situation would be a violation of human rights with citation to Article 20 (ergo, I state that a child's human rights are being violated because he/she is being coerced to belong into an association), and he brings out something about taxes which doesn't fit into the scope of my argumentation. He talks about states granting citizenship, but (1) If he's talking about nation-states, citizenship has to be acquired by the person entering into the country by himself/herself anyway. (2) Even if it were given out to people like that, the people have CHOSEN to be part of that said association, meaning that this is not a violation of human rights. It's evident from all these arguments my opponent makes that he has no real understanding of human rights.