Gay Marriage

P1: I like to believe that we should decide if something is or is not legal based upon Mill's "Harm Principal." This principal states that if somebody is doing something that we don't like that we have no right to alter their actions through legal action or moral condemnation unless they are actually harming others(1). The only exception to this rule that applies to our society is in the case of children, who cannot marry under normal circumstances anyway. Things should be legalized based upon freedom and that legality is stripped away if it proves to be doing damage to others. Con's argument that its not harming anything doesn't mean it should be legal would allow me to illegalize anything that was not doing an immediate good for society. With Con's logic I could make Family Guy illegal because it isn't helping anybody. One could say that Family Guy makes people happy, and I could tell them that same sex marriage makes people in love with people of the same sex happy. P2: Con forgets about how many people get married with no intent on raising children. Not all people who get married are trying to have children. Some aren't even having sex(2). Asexuals have no interest in making children but still sometimes marry just for the emotional connection. Could this be what con meant when he was talking about people abusing marriage? If the worst abuse is two people living together, enjoying one another's company, and paying slightly different taxes without the intent of child rearing then I think that we will all be just fine. And if this is the abuse and it cannot be tolerated, do we need to start screening people for intent to bear a child? P3: Defining marriage as between a man and a woman isn't the only alternative to allowing same-sex marriage. Con keeps referring to marriage based upon love as being a revisionist's view of marriage. This idea of "one man and one woman" is equally revisionist(3). Christianity allows polygamy(4). Many of the Ancient Greeks viewed marriage as an institution for the raising of children as well(5), and fathers usually decided marriage for them and if a woman could not give you children then divorce was just common practice. Revision isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it's progress. P4: If Con would not like to take away children from a same-sex couple, they why would he like to take away their social and legal benefits that he feels are in place primarily for raising a child? Con would like to keep something illegal that would help with the raising of children? Though there are definite arguments for biological parents' superiority over equally capable parents who share no blood, there is little to no denying that parents made stable by marriage do a better job(6). Allowing gay marriage could do wonders to apply these benefits to more adopted children. R1: Con is trying to say that I'm strawmanning him, among the use of other fallacies, when that just isn't true. Con states that same-sex couples are not as good at raising children, that marriage exists to raise children, and marriage existing to better raise children is why people of the same gender should not be allowed to be married. A straw man argument is where one side suggests argument A, then the other party defeats a very altered or somethings completely different that we will call argument B, and suggests that this means that argument A is wrong(7). Red herrings are an issue of relevance(8). Though my points have all been from different angles, the point that gay marriage should be legal has been the relevance. Con also infers that I am pulling facts from the same website I said was flawed just because I used it in my citations. I don't want to insult the credibility of something without showing why I feel it is not credible. As anybody can see, I cited it because I made references to its own citations. I even listed them. And speaking of a straw man argument, on the issue of gay marriage Con says that two people of the same sex aren't as good at parenting, so should not be allowed to marry, but should still be allowed to raise a child. Con can suggest that two biological parents are the best, and may even be very right, but cannot suggest a good reason not to let them marry. Con is yet to tell me who is being harmed by it. 1: http://documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com... 2: http://www.theguardian.com... 3: http://livinglifewithoutanet.com... 4: http://www.answering-christianity.com... 5: http://historylink101.com... 6: http://familyfacts.org... 7: http://www.nizkor.org... 8: http://www.nizkor.org...