These scenarios ought to be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

" All of these scenarios refer to one teacher that now sits before a judge and is waiting to be prosecuted." You've contradicted your own guidelines. "> My opponent will contend that all of these events should be treated differently in the eyes of the law, not because the law currently mandates this, but because there is some underlying principle that makes a valid moral distinction between them. With this in mind current laws about this issue will be entirely irrelevant to this debate. Appealing to current laws as the basis of an argument will not be accepted. " It is obviousy nonsensical to bar current law in a case that NOW sits before a judge. Either you are discussing whether prosecution SHOULD happen, which means you are discussing how future laws on the matter should be, or you are discussing a present case in which case present law is relevant. The latter is more conclusively banned by the guidelines than the former, and so the only non-contradictory interpretation is to hold that the statements are time-of-the-case neutral. "You're throwing in an additional variable, namely the potential for pregnancy, to draw a distinction between them. But none of these situations involved a pregnancy because they are all "identical"." They are identical except for gender-- which means EVERYTHING GENDER ENTAILS is admissible into the exception. If the statement of excepting gender from the ban on differences were not to include the attributes of gender it would be a meaningless deception on your part-- and useless, since how you presented the guidelines in R1 governs what the guidelines are, not how you contradicted that representation in R2 or R3. " Even if I were to go along with your argument thus far it would still fail for the following reason. You have failed to realize that not all forms of heterosexual sex involve a risk of pregnancy. Heterosexual couples can engage in forms of sex that involve zero risk of pregnancy even without the use of contraception. You assert that heterosexual relations carry the risk of pregnancy but we know this isn't true. Oral sex carries with it no risk of pregnancy whatsoever. " It is far easier to ascertain whether a sexual relationship exists between two people than what sort of sexual relationship exists between them. Court observers cannot effectively be dispersed to bedrooms and other sexual meeting locations to observe whether the sex is oral or otherwise. Additionally, once sex acts have been undertaken resolution to avoid specific types is significantly weakened. The difficulty of maintaining a resolution to limit oneself to oral sex as opposed to no sex, in addition to the enforcement costs of a ban on oral sex as opposed to a ban on sex as such, are quite sufficient to necessitate that the governing law on the matter bar all sex between student-teacher pairings capable of producing a child for the purposes of public schools. " Your argument could be surmised as follows, "Don't impregnate or get impregnated by your students. And don't engage in any behavior that carries the risk of this." Since this is what your argument essentially amounts to it doesn't logically draw a distinction between any of the scenarios I outlined, because not all heterosexual sex carries the risk of pregnancy." In the vision of the law, it does. Remember, the resolution is about the eyes of the law. It is quite enough to have the law looking into whether an affair occurs, the law is not efficiently able to distinguish between sex in one orifice as opposed to another.