Same Sex Marriage

Well, the time has come for the final round. I want to thank Bman for opening up this topic and for accepting me as an opponent, even though I do not have very many completed debates on this site as yet. This is an interesting and timely topic. As we argue over the finer points, the Supreme Court, as far as I know, is deliberating on whether legalization of same-sex marriage will take place on a national scale. First, a quick recap. Bman did address my argument against SSM based on economic disadvantage. I maintain that if an honest religious person who owns a business who can make a referral elsewhere does not want to participate in a public ceremony where religious expression is implied or compelled, that is their right of conscience and it would violate the First Amendment of Freedom of Religion to punish that business owner economically through fines and sanctions. If the State is compelling religious speech, even if it's making an atheist saying "one nation under God" in the pledge of Allegiance, that is against the Constitution and someone's conscience. To fine someone for that sort of non-participation creates economic woe and hardship as well as being UnConstitutional. Next, Bman did not tackle the behavioral problems present in Same-Sex couples who raised children but instead he choose to look at a limited Australian study which points out that homosexual marriage may have higher rates than heterosexual marriage. This may be true but since the study acknowledged that 13 years was the average length of heterosexual marriages in this part of Australia, there was not enough time to know whether the average length of homosexual marriages would be shorter or longer than the heterosexual marriages. Also, Bman did not cite how these marriages would not produce the sort of negative child-rearing effects cited in my Regnerus study. Bman uses an interesting example of both a single man and a single woman who want to marry the same single man (Round 2). This poses an interesting dilemma. Unless the state is allowing polygamy, obviously only one of the two can marry the single man. I had counter-argued to this example that the state has a legitimate interest in securing and incentivizing relationships which could possibly produce offspring since that would be more economically advantageous than not. In supporting that point, I cited the full documentation for the Massachusetts case where the state's interest in securing heterosexual marriage was deliberated upon. Finally, Bman brings up a very interesting analogy between non-human animal and human animal relationships. I pointed out that he raises the possibility between homosexual pairings being pragmatically viable in both groups but that he does not really develop his argument. In order for Bman to argue for the plausibility of economic (and other) advantages resulting from homosexual pairings in the human animal kingdom, he would need to show that homosexual pairing would confer the same (or similar) evolutionary advantages for non-human animal and human animal groups. I would be really interested in seeing a more fully developed argument to make this case. I would recommend to him the work of a primatologist or perhaps ethicist, Peter Singer, who has done much work in the area of moral theory and animal and human communities. Thank you again for your time and effort on behalf on this topic and perhaps we can address it again someday in the future.