High school Public Forum Debate resolutions should not confront sensitive religious issues.

Your definitions are not exactly "for clarification", and are not accurate in many ways. High School Public Forum Debate Resolutions has a very specific definition: the resolutions the National Forensics League releases every month to Public Forum. My opponent has disregarded the phrase "Public Forum" I agree with Confront. Sensitive: History is not the only source of evidence or reasoning. There are many other forms of evidence. Also, the Con side has a connotation of sensitive, which is provoking a negative reaction. This is abusive because if all sensitive religious issues are negative, where are the grounds to debate? Also, all sensitive things are not negative. Therefore I will define emotional as: triggering emotional responses Religious issues: I'd like to put up another definition of religious issue as simple a controversial issue pertaining to religion because his definition is a bit confusing. What, specifically, is stem? How do you measure a conflict? Before I support my own contentions, I would like to refute all my opponent's contentions. Con Contention 1: We teach these at schools, so why not Debate? The core of my opponent's argument is from the connection between school and debate. Debate is different from school because they offer switch-side debate and therefore this contention has no ground in this debate. This debate forces students to debate against their own beliefs, which is unfair and obviously not moral. I will go deeper into this in my first contention. Furthermore, the very constitution they cite contradicts the contention. The Free Exercise Clause says that nothing should be made to prevent the free exercise of a religion [1]. This Clause is breached when we force debaters to advocate another belief. Also, McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) and Zorach v. Clauson (1952)[2] has shown that even not under school hours, no program can be held on school grounds that may advocate a religion. Debate tournaments are on school grounds, so we cannot allow sensitive religious issues to be advocated. Contention 2: Do not need to debate against their own beliefs First I'd like to point out that this is not a contention and is simply a refutation. I will address this topic further in my first contention. Contention 3: We should debate sensitive religious issues What? This is not a contention, but an overview. The Con says that they are unlike political issues, but religious issues are a lot more sensitive. It is a way of life for many people. People devote Sundays to go to church, and therefore more sensitive than political issues. He also says that people treat religion as if it is "something immutable". 37% of America have an unfavorable view of Islam. 46% believe that Muslims are more likely to engage in violent acts [3]. One fifth of America is religiously isolated, which are people who believe all other religions are false and "they don't always treat those of other religious faiths with respect, and they don't always feel respected by members of other faiths [4]." Now on to my own contentions. Contention 1: Public Forum debate can offend people that have religious views. In Public Forum, students must argue for both sides of a resolution. Because of this, students would be arguing against their own belief. We offend debaters when we force them to argue against their religious beliefs. Allowing the debate of sensitive religious issues causes a negative cognitive response from the brain. Research has been conducted by Dr. Newberg that it is scientifically proven that debating religious issues triggers a large increase in stress and anger response. He says that "whether it's people who believe in abortion versus those who don't, whether it's just one religion versus another, ¡­ [it] turns on the different parts of the brain that are involved in our stress response and our anger response [5]." Because an anger and stress response occurs, debaters can become emotional and ruin the environment of the debate. This could cause debaters to lash out and make rash decisions. By allowing this, people taking part in this debate will be offended. The NFL did not want one to feel uncomfortable because they were "forced to debate on a side of the resolution that had a religious inclination opposed to their personal religious beliefs [6]." One of the goals of Public Forum debate is to increase the participation, but because the original November resolution forced people to debate against their own belief, many students did not want to participate. They took down the original Public forum topic because of the major reason that participation would decrease. Resolutions that single out specific religious groups, like how the prior November resolution singled out Muslims would alienate and offend members of that religion. If we debate sensitive religious issues, we are causing an even greater drop in the diversity among the participants. Everyone should have the right to participate in debate, and by debating sensitive religious issues, Public Forum is taking away this right. Because participation decreases, less people are being educated by public forum debate, and it is morally wrong to offend debaters. Contention 2: It is proven that adolescence is a stage of strong emotional and behavioral response. As the affirmation we strongly believe that added on to the fact that we are merely teenagers, we are hormonal and are not mature enough to debate sensitive religious issues. Ronald Dahl's Adolescent Brain Development Article states that adolescence is a stage with "difficulties in the control of behavior and emotion [7]." First of all, as teenagers, we do not have the life experience nor the brain maturity to talk about sensitive religious issues in a debate environment, where it is supposed to be educational and fun. To add on, in adolescence we have difficulties controlling our behavior and emotions. We may be more susceptible to lash out and say offending things to other debaters. This will offend debaters and ruin the debate environment. As Aristotle states, Youth are heated by nature as drunken men by wine. Religious issues need to be approached with caution, as a small misstep would offend a great amount of people. As teenagers we do not possess the cognitive mindset to debate these issues. The Con side really only has one contention, as the second contention is a refutation and the third one is just a general statement. This contention has been refuted many times in this debate. Because we offend people and participation decreases and adolescents are too immature, please place a ballot for the Affirmation, or Proponents of this resolution. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org... [2]:http://pewforum.org... [3]:http://people-press.org... [4]:http://www.gallup.com... [5]:http://www.pbs.org... [6]:http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com... [7]:http://www.psych.umn.edu...