Gay marriage should be legal

I'll permit you to do a rebuttal of round 4 this round, if that is what you want, but only because my rebuttals are very similar between rounds 3 and 4.Counter-rebuttals Contention 1: It harms and infringes on rights. The taxation of people who believe gay marriage is immoral is not a problem since: The majority of the US is in favor of gay marriage. Disagreeing with a use of tax dollars (by the minority group, in this case) is hardly a reason, since someone will always disagree with something. If I don't like Social Security, I still have to pay for it. Under this argument, DOMA should be repealed. By your statistics, allowing gay marriage would cost taxpayers less ($6 billion for DOMA, $0.9 billion for employment benefits for same-sex domestic partnership). Your second statement (which implies that homosexuality is a choice) goes against the general scientific consensus of the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics:http://www.nytimes.com...Your cited source doesn't hold much value when compared with the extremely large amount of comparable psychologists who would disagree with her. Since I see you cited Wikipedia, I take it that I can, too:http://en.wikipedia.org...As you can see, the general consensus is that abnormal prenatal androgen exposure is the cause of homosexuality. A society that is not accepting of homosexuals would only successfully increase suicide rates among homosexuals, and the same amount of people would be homosexual. Of course, these people won't admit they are due to fear of lack of acceptance, so it would be hard to gauge. However, the burden of proof still lies on you, and would require you to find studies showing findings that can't be explained by the current scientific consensus. While your Family Research Council source in your previous post claimed to have such information, it excluded the numbers - please make sure your study includes the numbers. Contention 2: Legalizing gay marriage affects the federal government Paragraphs 1 & 2 are covered by my last counter-rebuttal. With your useful numbers on the cost of DOMA, I can now say that it costs less to legalize gay marriage. Your quote seems to imply that our society is only comprised of married couples. Single people and children exist. And some married couples choose not to have children. Should we start exempting couples without children or couples who have one infertile parent from marriage? Of course not, that'd be silly. The basic unit of society is undoubtedly the individual. Contention 3: If same-sex couples enter into committed, monogamous relationships it would reduce the spread of STDs among gays. Under that logic, there is no reason to let heterosexuals marry, either - they can just stay together without it, right? Marriage is a committment. Why should we deny homosexuals the ability to make a formal committment? Contention 4: Same-sex couples can adopt children but can't raise them as well as opposite-sex couples. If you read the NYTimes article I linked earlier, you'll see that the ability of a couple to be married, regardless of sexual orientation, is better for the children than a single parent, which is in turn better than an orphanage (from my source in round 2). This alone should be enough for me to win the debate. Your cited source ignores same-sex couples entirely, and doesn't do anything to support your following. Discrimination It isn't illegal in every state, as the maps in your cited source show. It is good to see that we agree that there should be no discrimination on basis of sexual orientation. Rebuttals to new argumentsWhat is Marriage? Appeal to tradition. It is equal, since a same-sex couple and an opposite-sex couple are both capable of deciding not to reproduce. Changing the definition of marriage was even part of DOMA: SEC. 3. DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE. (a) In General.--Chapter 1 of title 1, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: ``Sec. 7. Definition of `marriage' and `spouse' ``In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word `marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word `spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.'. http://www.gpo.gov... This section has been found unconstitutional by 8 federal courts, as well as the Obama administration:http://en.wikipedia.org... The Supreme Court hearing on its constitutionality is in 3 days, on the 27th. An interesting coincidence, if you ask me. No legal right You still haven't produced a credible study to prove that same-sex couples can't raise a child better than an orphanage or a single homosexual (which is really the only situation which is relevant here, given that orphanages have tons of children eligible for adoption and nobody adopting them). Lesbian couples can have artificial insemination, and therefore can produce children. Social Norms Africans did not fit under the legal definition of a person. Did that stop us from 'changing the definition of a person'? No. That was changing a social norm and redefining something, and many eugenecists were certain that African-Americans could never fill the role of a Caucasian in society. Under this standard, if we criticize gay marriage for these reasons, we must criticize this decision as well. It does not necessarily matter here whether the roles of mother and father are filled, results are what matter. If a same-sex couple can raise a child successfully, then does it really matter in the end how 'traditional' it is? You have still failed to produce credible evidence that children from same-sex couples are any worse from this. If you feel that it is unjust to heterosexuals, then tell me: What would heterosexuals not be able to do if same-sex couples could be married? Not the children, but the couple themselves. Your point on religion is not relevant in this debate, as it is a tradition of our government to not respect any establishment of religion over another, regardless of who is the majority. They have the right to practice their religion. That doesn't mean that the government has to practice their religion in regards to politics, since if they do, that would infringe upon the rights of anyone who disagrees with them. Nothing would get done that way. Loss of meaning The Roman empire recognized gay marriage, therefore, male and female have not been the definition of marriage for all of time. Other societies have used marriage as a political leverage device (i.e. marrying off the handsome prince of your kingdom to the beautiful princess of another kingdom to end the war you are in), and other societies have arranged marriages. If marriage 'loses its meaning' like this, then it looks like it's been lost already. Does that mean we should start embracing arranged marriages?There aren't any words that maintain one definition, since our language does evolve. A certain three-letter word rhyming with 'rag' used as a slur against homosexuals originally only meant 'cigarette'. Did the meaning change? No, we added a definition to it. We made it more generalized, just like we did when we stopped doing arranged marriages. Conclusion The conclusion is that most arguments against gay marriage are irrelevant, misleading, not supported by any credible evidence, or outright false. Same-sex couples don't have to have children any more than a heterosexual couple does. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that same-sex couples are bad parents. Erring on the side of personal freedom, therefore, it is reasonable to legalize gay marriage.