Resolved: Governments ought legislate anti-bullying policies focusing on sexual orientation.

Morality of Law argument: There are several things that I'm not understanding about this particular argument, so I'll try to place them into a list form:(1) First, my opponent says that someone should only have rights taken away when (s)he violates the rights of another person, but provides absolutely no context to rights. I'm not sure if my opponent is talking about Constitutional rights, human rights, etc. I would really like for my opponent to provide a context to these rights to better understand his argument. (2) Second, it's important to state that no one is making the action of calling someone names a crime. Anti-bullying legislation in question is in focus for public schools in America and the demand for schools to follow a tighter protocol in order to deal with the situation of bullying against members of the LGBT community. No one is talking about tossing a bully into jail or something for calling someone else a racial slur in schools. (3) Third, my opponent talks about how a bully should not be criminalized for making commentary like that, but at the same time, he promotes the idea of other forms of punishment by schools and parents. If you analyze this philosophically, my opponent is still advocating punishment of the bully for the use of slurs and whatnot when he just said that we shouldn't take away rights of citizens unless they have taken away the rights of others. This is probably the most important point out of all the rest because it implies that bullies at some level are still taking away rights by calling someone mean names consistantly and supports the idea bullies do indeed need to be punished for their actions."Bullying is bullying": This doesn't really make an impact in the scope of the debate considering that we're focusing on the bullying of sexual orientation, and the difference between punching the short guy and punching the gay guy is that punching the gay guy will constitute the more mainstream form of bullying in public schools. I'm not here to tell you that the concerns of one bullied person should be more prioritized than another, however. In fact, if you scroll back to my Sub-point 1b, you can see that legislation can be expanded in order to include physical attributes as well, which can include height. When the resolution is stating "focusing on sexual orientation," legislations can be expanded to include other forms of bullying. What is important is the explicit enumeration of bullying against sexual orientation in the legislation considering that this is the focus of the debate. Assault laws: My opponent and I seem to agree on at least one thing: the assault aspect of bullying should be addressed with seriously, meaning that at least half a degree, bullying needs to be punished. The real clash in this debate seems to fall on the part where a bully is using slurs and verbal harassment on LGBT students as a form of harassment, and at the point where he stated himself that punishment is needed for the bully, it means that my opponent is already conceding to my case.Sub-point 1a argument: I have already explained how legislation can encompass all forms of bullying. What is important as far as this debate is concerned is the explicit enumeration of bullying against sexual orientation. Sub-point 1b argument: This is probably a really interesting argument to look at in the scope of the debate. First, my opponent states that legislation causes problems, and while he may be true in the scope of some legislation, he provides no reason as to why such a particular legislation on bullying would cause problems. If you look back to my case, I have shown you how the legislation has been effective at reducing bullying in schools. My opponent isn't arguing against this piece of legislation; he's just arguing against legislation. Second, my opponent is partially changing the scope of this debate from whether there should be legislation for public schools to whether there should be public schools. The question is this debate is whether the judges will look toward legislation over a change in the public school system. I, again, have provided evidence empirical showing the effectiveness of the legislation while my opponent gives you a theoretical perspective questionable at best. The reputation thing for schools running like business might work, but we have no real experimentations of that by my opponent, and there are so many precarious natures to this as well: What if the bully's parents are notable donors to the school and they might lose business? What if policies against bullying require the expense of more money they have no room to waste? Unless my opponent has empirics for this, we should focus on the legislation instead...simplifying the debate at hand.