Same-sex marriages should be legal in the United States.

"Two points on this. Regardless of the need for procreation, the value hasn’t changed. It is necessary regardless of the modern facts regarding the implications of marriage. "My opponent already seems a bit confused here. What does he mean by "value? " If the need (the requirement of procreation to maintain sustanable populatio levels) hasn't changed, then procreation is still necessary, although not, as I argue, as a primary function of marriage. But the value, not the need, has definitely changed enormously. Children are no longer necessary to sustain economic familial units. Procreation only really needed create a new generation, and we are in no danger in that area. "Things that bring about effects are not the same thing as functions. "Relevance? My entire case was centered around the function of marriage being different than in the past. "I provided a strong case for why procreation is the main function of marriage, which my opponent has failed to address, therefore it becomes difficult for my opponent to make an argument that would suggest that the conjugal marriage is unsupported. " After looking through it, there wasn't much that wasn't addressed by my previous rebuttal. The continued existence of society (its need for fresh members to be born) is what my opponent seems to be arguing for. Thus, the "intrinstic" value of procreation should be understood be a collective value for society as a whole. Here is where Con's case decisively falls apart. Arguing that conjugal marriage has intrinstic value because of its value to society is not a valid argument when the function of marriage as its own respective institution is not procreation any longer. My opponent is question-begging; to assert that marriage has value as its procreational contribution to society in order to argue of their inherent superiority in contrast to non-procreational type unions and then use that to claim to say that since procreational unions are superior, they are therefore are more useful to society is simply circular reasoning. The entire need for a procreative institution in the first place was fundamentally pragmatic, and marriage has evolved over the centuries to be what I defined it as. "He mentions that creating stable family units and raising children, but this is hardly clear on the former and unlikely for homosexuals on the latter. What is meant by “stable”? What does that consist of? ""Stable family units" are defined as families that have the emotional attachments and the psychological connections that children need for healthy development (reducing risks such as divorce or major fights). "Raising children is rare for homosexuals but from my second argument that my opponent hasn’t refuted we know that homosexuals are not the same as heterosexuals when it comes to raising children. "It makes little difference as to how many homosexuals actually intend to get married, only those that do will have adoption rights. The divorce rates of homosexual marriages in the US is actually slightly lower than opposite-sex marriage: . http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu... "My opponent has made a critical assumption about marriage that is consistently applied throughout the case; he assumes that marriages implications necessarily imply what marriage is. Marriage isn’t federal assured procreation but it helps facilitate and promote relationships which facilitate procreation. "No, not really. My case was centered around the functions, not implications (whatever that means) of marriage. Con finally seems to have made his definition clearer- the purpose of federal marriage licenses are, according to him, to facilitate procreative relationships. But this would imply that procreation itself was being subsidized, yet birth rates continue to climb without y need for federal involvement. This argument is moot. "A study in the Netherlands, a gay-tolerant nation that has legalized homosexual marriage, found the average duration of a homosexual relationship to be one and a half years. "This needs to be sourced. "Furthermore, the Journal of Family Issues published in September 2001 published a study regarding the differences between heterosexual and homosexual parenting which showed that the parenting styles of homosexuals and heterosexual parents differed 15 % for gays and 30% for lesbians. "Likewise. Lesbian mothers interact with children in different ways than heterosexual mothers. The presence of a father reduces the chance that his children will use drugs or become criminals. Children raised by lesbians were more sexually active, the presence of a father helps promote chaste. One biological aspect: Boys need fathers to help form sexual identities, and need mothers in order to interact with the opposite sex. People with the best sexual lives are raised by both genders. When interacting with people in the future, the father is actually more important than the mother. For boys, when going through puberty they need to begin to interact with the father. The father teaches the child how to be assertive, how to be “a man”. First of all, parents are not critical for development of children- children develop relationships with other adults and peers and learn social skills and gain sexual indentities that way. In fact, this seems to be largely more important than having fathers, as these skills are developed through experience and personal interaction with the people they will be interacting with. Secondly, most research has resulted in the opposite consensus. I will address that study directly next round. "Decades of methodologically sound social science research, especially multiple nationally representative studies and the expert evidence introduced in the district courts below, confirm that positive child wellbeing is the product of stability in the relationship between the two parents, stability in the relationship between the parents and child, and greater parental socioeconomic resources. Whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on a child’s wellbeing"-[. http://www.asanet.org...]