gay marriage should be legal

Ill make this as brief as possible. My opponent claims my first contention is "trivially true" and that "We all know not to place restrictions on things for no reason." Yes, I know that "we all know." That does not make it trivial or nonobjective. This is not a refutation of my first contention. His dispute with my second contention is mostly unwarranted other than it is true that I did not define what I meant by culture and nature. I will do so. First, however, Con's analogy with beans is incorrect. Beans would be something I consider natural. How we use beans is something I consider cultural. For instance, we could use beans as money, or we could cook them in several different foods. I hope that puts culture and nature into some context. Culture I would define as the total of the inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge, which constitute the shared bases of social action (http://dictionary.reference.com...). This is extremely broad, but it will suffice for this debate. Nature, on the other hand, is the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities (http://dictionary.reference.com...). Again, this is broad, but is socially acceptable. Culture is simply what humans do and nature is what humans do not do, but what we use. Contention one works perfectly with the conclusion. Contention two works if we incorporate it in the correct way insofar as we may imagine one to argue that a reason for banning gay marriage is because it defies "nature," or that heterosexual marriages have some sort of innate benefit towards society that same-sex marriage cannot provide. This is a common argument I have heard, so that is why I included contention two. In short, the argument works if we accept the premises, which Con has failed to refute. I will now deal with Con's argument as briefly as possible. Con's argument pretty much breaks down to two contentions: 1) the two unions are not equivalent, or the same; and 2) the state has more interest in heterosexual unions. 1) Con claims that the two unions are not equivalent in nature, analogizing the two relationships with friends and business partners. First, Con is conflating "sameness" with "equality." In some instances, the two are the same. In this instance, the two are not because we are not talking about the relationships by definition, which are not the same, we are talking about the legal rights of both groups. Second, Con's analogy is not valid. The government does not recognize friends and it only recognizes businesses insofar as requiring individuals to obtain a business license. Business partners can still be friends as well as a married couple. The only difference between these group is by definition within social context. The government does not dole out rights based on differences. 2) Con argues that the state has more interest in the heterosexual union because it is "directly relevant to whether or not the society continues to grow or not." This is completely untrue. First, the government does not require that people have children in a marriage; therefore, it is completely irrelevant to distinguish a marriage on whether or not it can bear children. Second, homosexuals can have children. Obviously, through different means such as artificial insemination and adoption, both of which heterosexual couples can use if they are infertile. In short, Con's argument by definition is discriminatory. We could replace each variant of homosexual union with a variant of interracial couple, and one could not distinguish this argument from ones made by white supremacists to keep interracial marriage illegal. This is a civil rights issue!