Resolved: High School Public Forum Debate Resolutions should not confront sensitive religious issues

I would like to start by saying that my opponent has made many unfair accusations and insinuations, including one insinuation that I lied about a Public Forum event here in Orange County last year. I will devote my round to disproving these accusations, defending my case, and summing up my points. On the other hand, though, I would like to thank my opponent for clarifying why his rebuttal to my first contention was just a rebuttal and was not the presentation of his own contention incognito. My opponent's main counterpoint is that my logic is suggesting that we remove all modern topics, and debate on old topics. He says that Public Forum was founded to debate controversial modern topics. While I agree that this is an important aspect of Public Forum, I would also argue that this is not why Public Forum was originally founded. Public Forum debate was founded to provide an intelligent and stimulating environment for team debates that does not require the intense amount of preparation that Policy debate requires. Debating modern topics is just one of the ways that Public Forum does this. [1] My opponent's counterpoint is irrelevant, though, because I am not suggesting that we remove all modern topics. That was an intentional misinterpretation, a cruel twisting if you will, of my original contentions. The topic is, "Resolved: High School Public Forum Debate Resolutions should not confront sensitive religious issues." The key work here is sensitive. If you cross apply the definition of sensitive that I gave in the first round to the resolution, it becomes clear that I am not saying that Public Forum resolutions should not confront any topic, or even any religious issue. Only sensitive religious issues. And sensitive is defined as anything that seriously annoys, irritates, offends, or causes serious emotional harm. Thus, only debate resolutions that are capable of producing such a serious state should be prohibited. This is what I am arguing, not that all topics in any way regarding religion should be banned. Thus, my opponent's rebuttals are misplaced. My opponent has said that the examples I provided for contentions that could offend students are illogical, as those students could choose not to use them. But I wasn't talking about students who were of that belief; I was referring to students who were not of the particular religion using contentions that could insult other students. In this case, such students would have no reason not to use such contentions, especially if they felt it might improve the case, and thus they may insult another student. Once again, my opponent is making a faulty assumption and has failed to rebut my contention. My opponent also has insinuated that I was lying when I spoke of a topic last year concerning the building of the mosque, or Islamic Cultural Center as my opponent so avidly points out, because it was not listed as one of the topics of the official tournaments regarding Public Forum. However, last year my school, University High School in Irvine California, attended the Fairmont OSCL Orange Country Speech League tournament, a tournament that follows National Forensics League rules and is supported by NFL. This was the Public Forum topic, to which my current debate partner, Andaru Iman, attended with a different partner at the time who has since graduated. I did not attend the event, but I know about it and how the topic was offensive to many of our Muslim students who also attended the tournament. My opponent has stated that hypocrisy is not an issue because judges will detect it and deduct points. However, Public Forum debate was designed to be judged primarily by lay judges, who are often simply the parents of the students in the debates. They are not necessarily experienced at judging, and may not detect hypocrisy or deduct points from it. Thus, my opponent has still not denoted any value for hypocrisy in a debate. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you a case in which my opponent has tried to disprove my facts through a series of invalid accusations and assumptions. My opponent's entire argument has been that "I am trying to bar all topics from Public Forum," but I have never said this nor I have tried to prove it. I am not reflecting this point as the negative. I am arguing that only sensitive religious topics should not be debated in Public Forum, and not all topics are sensitive as defined above. I have disproved my opponent's rebuttals, and now will disprove the final point he has made. My opponent has tried to prove that teenagers are more tolerant based on the gallup poll. It is a poll conducted in which students simply say what they would do. It is not measuring actual action, and people can easily choose options that make themselves look better to the public. On the contrary, recent studies conducted based on actual facts have shown that teenagers and young adults commit more hate crimes than any other age group. [2] These hate crimes are based on everything from religion to sexuality, and thus demonstrate that high school students are not necessarily more tolerant to anything, including religion. [3] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.restoringtroubledteens.com... 3. http://www.cphpost.dk...