"Resolved: Gay marriage should be okay in the united states"

I don't see how my opponent does not understand my cities, and yes they were relevant to the debate. I did give my opponent the evidence they asked for. It doesn't matter if my opponents case is based on religion or not. Some of my points are. The bible is not "Irrelevant" I would like to ask how is same sex not harmful? HERES AN EXAMPLE THAT NOT ALL STATES WANT GAY MARRIAGE U. S. District Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California's gay marriage ban, known as Proposition 8, last week. He said that it amounts to unconstitutional discrimination. Today, Judge Walker put gay marriage on hold for another six days to give opponents to his ruling more time to get a decision from a higher court on whether gay marriage will be permitted to resume. Otherwise, gay marriage will be legal in California beginning next Wednesday. Id like to say that my opponent failed to attack my case! NOW ITD LIKE TO ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS TO BRING! ! WHICH WOULD BRING MY CASE BACK UP AND ATTACK MY OPPONENTS CASE Gay rights advocates and others say that gay and lesbian people want to get married for the same reasons that straight people do - they want to be in caring, stable relationships, they want to build a life and even start a family with someone else. Why shouldn't they be able to do this? See, I think that's the foundational flaw with this whole debate. The law is as it has been for 200-plus years, and so the burden is on them to make the persuasive case as to why they should be married, not just for their benefit but for what the impact is on society and marriage as a whole, and on children. I would argue that the gay community has not made the argument. They may have made the argument as to why they want it, but they have not made any arguments as to why this is beneficial for society. They have not made any argument - convincing or otherwise, that I'm aware of - as to what the impact would be on heterosexual marriages and what the impact would be on children. They have no studies. They have no information whatsoever about what it would do to the moral ecology of the country, what it would do to religious liberty, what it would do to the mental and physical health of children - nothing. They've made no case. Basically the case they've made is, "We want what you want, and therefore you should give it to us. " So you're saying that advocates of same-sex marriage are not seeing the big picture? Yes. I have a book that was written a few years ago called It Takes a Family. In that book I have a chapter on moral ecology, and I explain that if you go to the National Archives, you will come to a section that has, as far as the eye can see, rows and rows and rows of environmental impact statements, because we have laws in this country that say before you go out and you put in a bridge across a creek, you have to go out and see whether what you're doing is disturbing the landscape there. Yet when it comes to something that I happen to believe is actually more important than a particular plot of land - the entire moral ecology of our country, who we are as a people, what we stand for, what we teach our children, what our values and ethics are - people argue that we can build the equivalent of a strip mall without even thinking about what those consequences are. Some people in favor of gay marriage have argued for a "go-slow" approach, acknowledging that we're in largely unknown territory and that a majority of Americans are not yet comfortable with same-sex marriage. Does that attitude allay any of your fears? No. They want the convenient accelerator of the courts to put this in play, and then they want the judicious temperament of the American democratic system to govern it. I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too. Same-sex marriage advocates are not going to state legislatures, except in some cases for civil unions. They are using the courts. If the courts are going to be your accelerator, then get ready for a ride. And if the courts ultimately say, "Marriage must be allowed between anybody and anybody," the gay rights advocates are not going to say, "Well, you've gone too far. " No, I think the go-slow argument is there to make us feel better, but it doesn't hold water. Another argument made by gay rights advocates is that with or without marriage, gay families are already a widespread reality. They point out that we already have gay couples living together, some with children. And they ask: Isn't it better that they be legally married to each other, if for no other reason than for the benefit and the welfare of the children? The answer is no - because of the consequences to society as a whole. And again, those are consequences that they choose to ignore. What society should be about is encouraging what's best for children. What's best for children, we know, is a mother and a father who are the parents of that child, raising that child in a stable, married relationship, and we should have laws that encourage that, that support that. What you're talking about with same-sex marriage is completely deconstructing marriage and taking away a privilege that is given to two people, a man and a woman who are married, who have a child or adopt a child. We know it's best for children and for society that men and women get married. We know it's healthier. We know it's better for men. We know it's better for women. We know it's better for communities. What we don't know is what happens with other options. And once you get away from the model of "what we know is best" and you get into the other options, from my perspective, there's no stopping it. And also from my perspective, you devalue what you want to value, which is a man and woman in marriage with a child or children. And when you devalue that, you get less of it. When you get less of it, society as a whole suffers. Do you feel confident that if same-sex marriage became the norm in our society that we would get less traditional marriage? The answer is yes, because marriage then becomes, to some degree, meaningless. I mean, if anybody can get married for any reason, then it loses its special place. And, you know, it's already lost its special place, in many respects, because of divorce. The institution of marriage is already under assault. So why should we do more to discredit it and harm it? Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has written extensively about this, about what the impact is in countries that have adopted same-sex marriage. We have, in fact, seen a decline in the number of marriages, a delay in people getting married, more children being born out of wedlock and higher rates of divorce. None of those things are good for society. None of those things are good for children. But can you lay these changes at the feet of same-sex marriage? Yes, I think you can lay them at its feet. Kurtz notes that the marriage rate in the Netherlands was always actually one of the lowest in the EU. And once same-sex marriage was put in place, it broke below the line. As a person who has positioned himself as a defender of Christian values, why is gay marriage particularly opposed to those values? Well, the laws in this country are built upon a certain worldview, and it is the Judeo-Christian worldview. And that worldview has been expressed in our laws on marriage for 200-plus years. Up until 25 years ago, we would never have sat here and done this interview. It would have been beyond the pale. And so it is clearly a dramatic departure from the Judeo-Christian ethic that is reflected in our laws that say marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman.