Gay Marriage

== RE: Misconceptions == Jerry claims that accepting gay people is not necessarily a moral endeavor. I disagree with these positions, but they aren't relevant contentions. This debate is not about whether homosexuality is immoral or inherently harmful (it's not) but rather if gay people have the right to marry. Even people we find morally abhorrent have marriage rights. Hitler was married. The founders of the KKK were married. We do not give purity tests to determine who has the right to marry. == RE: Arguments Against SSM == Con notes that homosexuality is not common or pertinent to childbirth, and therefore un-natural. Just because something isn't found in nature (though Con admitted that homosexuality is found in nature) doesn't mean that it's immoral. Central air conditioning units are not found in nature - are they immoral? What exactly makes something immoral by Con's standards? I'm curious of his answer, though again it's not significant. While the government should not condone explicitly harmful behavior, or behavior which harms another person's property, they are not in the business of legally condemning alternative lifestyles. The role of government is not to impose subjective moral preferences, but to protect people's individual rights. For example I dislike racists, but they still have the right to free speech. Con may dislike gays, but they still have the right to marry. My opponent argues that homosexual behavior has "caused several problems for our society." So have cars - they kill millions of people each year, and are the primary cause of pollution, yet we still have the right to drive. What this means is that so long as people are not overtly harming others, their behaviors should be allowed. Drinking alcohol can be shown to be significantly harmful - causing alcoholism, drunk driving, increased violence, health related issues, increase in domestic violence, increase in divorce, increase in homelessness and poverty, increase in likelihood of committing crimes, etc. And yet despite the fact that drinking alcohol (and alcoholics) have these increased risks, people still have the right to drink alcohol -- and alcoholics still have fundamental civil rights: such as the right to assemble, free speech, property ownership, voting and... marriage. Ergo, just because one demographic can be demonstrated to have its own problems or statistical increase of issues, does not mean that people from those groups ought to have their rights inhibited. In this debate, Con must prove that gay couples should not have the right to marry on the basis of their sexual preference. Surely that would ultimately lead to a slippery slope where the government could legislate the rights away of any group deemed unfit. Our government was specifically designed to fight against this. Con spent his round focusing on how evil homosexuality is -- arguing that gays are molesters, narcissistic, etc. which is based on misguided generalizations, and does not argue his position effectively. He attempted to point out that homosexuality does not benefit society. Yet he failed to explain how society overall does not benefit from having a greater population of happier and healthier people. Nor was Con able to explain why the benefits of marriage (which make people happier and healthier) would not logically extend to gay couples. None of Con's arguments have much to do with marriage. For example, he notes that gay people are on balance more promiscuous and thus more likely to contract STDs. Okay... so what? Marriage rights are not determined by how many sexual partners we have. Furthermore, none of Con's statistics on promiscuity and STDs were pertinent to lesbians. If you include them in the equation, the numbers look a lot different. Either way, inhibiting gay marriage doesn't thwart gay sex.Con wants to punish an entire group based on statistical probability. Once again, that's not how rights work. Nearly 99% of sex offenders are male. Over 90% of homicides are committed by men. Males constitute 98% of those arrested for forcible rape and 90% of people arrested for robbery and burglary are male [1]. Does that mean men should have their rights inhibited, since men, on balance, contribute more to society's demise? Of course not. We have individual rights that specifically protect us from poor logic like this.Rights are not necessarily determined by what is good for society overall. For instance the freedom of speech gives me the right to spit venom profusely on a daily basis. Me spitting venom does not benefit society, and yet I still have that right. Gay people pay taxes and fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship. Therefore, they deserve the benefits and protections of citizenship. They are not overtly harming anyone, and even people who engage in risky or morally questionable behavior have civil rights. Further, they have the legal Constitutional right to have the same [civil] rights as every other American. == Additional Contentions == Some clear advantages to legalized SSM include minimizing unjust, unnecessary and harmful discrimination against the gay community. Acceptance fosters their psychological, physical and social well being, and provides for a more inclusive and happier, healthier society. In addition, it grants protection for LGBT families both in terms of monetary/proprietary issues and adoption. Legalizing SSM fosters true freedom of religion. "Freedom of religion protects those who do not follow a religion by shielding them from being forced to live in accordance with religious beliefs and values they do not agree with. The legalization of SSM is consistent with freedom of religion, in that it removes from marriage laws religious notions that may have initially shaped those laws" [2]. When the law suggests liberty and justice for all, it is clear that justice demands the equal protection we are all guaranteed by law, regardless of religious persecution. Moreover, the majority of Americans and populations of first-world countries worldwide support SSM. More than 60% of Americans consider legalizing SSM an important issue. As such, by acknowledging majority consensus, coupled with the majority of doctors and psychiatric views on homosexuality and how it isn't harmful [3] -- and also the legal provisions of the law, it is clear SSM should remain legal. Otherwise it will remain a contentious wedge issue that maximizes harmful culture wars and continues to hurt gay people and their families without reason. Finally, consider that the legalization of same-sex marriage has consistently been shown to provide an economic boost to those states and countries that have embraced marriage equality [4]. "More than a decade of research by myself and other economists and analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. . . suggests that state and federal budgets will actually get a positive boost if gay couples are allowed to marry. . . Many SSM couples would discover the marriage penalty in the federal income tax system, resulting in a likely increase in tax revenue. . . Hundreds of thousands of couples would start planning weddings, generating at least $1.5 billion in spending. . . and of course all those purchases generate millions in sales tax revenue for state and local governments" [5]. Now I'm not saying that just because the majority of people support something and just because society would benefit significantly from economic production that something is righteous. However considering all the variables, the righteous position on this debate is abundantly clear. Such an economic boost and promotion of harmless and beneficial tolerance in society is an undeniably net good for society overall. == RE: Conclusion == Jerry says "homosexual behavior literally does nothing to benefit society." He claims "there literally isn't a single good reason for allowing [gay] marriage to occur." Here Con literally misuses the word literally twice. Both of these statements are unabashedly false. First, gay people benefit from gay relationships. Intimacy, sexual gratification, romance and other factors that enhance people's lives are important. If gay people denied themselves love and sexual pleasure, they would miss out on the plethora of benefits people experience from these engagements. These include both physical, psychological and emotional benefits [6, 7]. The potential for negative repercussions doesn't mean every engagement is harmful or problematic. Secondly, I presented many reasons for supporting SSM including but not limited to:- Gay people benefit from validating their identity and can experience the benefits of marriage- The children of gay people benefit from marriage's legal protections and tax breaks- More people benefitting from SSM = a net benefit for society overall- SSM generates significant economic benefits - Gay people deserve benefits and legal protection- Validating SSM represents how a majority of citizen's see civil rights - Validating SSM upholds constitutional guarantees of Equal Protection under the lawSo let me be clear: just because Con does not acknowledge these and other benefits doesn't mean they don't exist. == RE: Sources == For those that do judge sources, please note my opponent's reliance on the laughably biased and notoriously unscientific Family Research Institute, which specifically looks to condemn homosexuality. They only support and present research with pre-determined conclusions. It would be easy to shred this source (Dr. Bergler's book was met with rage and condemnation even in 1956 when most people were homophobic), but again I'm not sure how pertinent that is to the debate. One peer review notes this research "had drawn conclusions from an unrepresentative sample of homosexuals" as just one of many criticisms [8]. MY SOURCES: http://tinyurl.com...