Places where homosexual couples can marry must represent other forms of marriage.

Now, on to address my opponent's points, and then to create my own (since I intended to start building the debate rather than actually present arguments. ) My opponent starts by talking about my point of animal relationships. When he speaks of the point "we can't obtain proper consent", this is actually a falsehood. The most obvious and most recognized forms of an animals desires or emotions is how they act, considering that we can't talk to them. So if an animal is displeased with something, it'd do one of two things. The first, is acting in defense. Dogs, for example, will run away with their tail between their legs, an obvious sign of cowarding. The second is to act in offense. This would be, and is more important to the debate, acts such as barking, biting, scratching, etc. These are pretty clear signs of consent; if they're not present, then you can generally agree that the animal has no real problem with it. Now on to incestuous relationships. My opponent brings up the point that incest can lead to bad birth defects. This is the krux of the argument. I have a couple of responses. 1) First, why should this disprove the question of the debate? Yes, this may be a problem, but there are other things like this already in society. For example, the right to bear arms in the United States. This is a right to us, the citizen. But bearing arms obviously leads to more guns on the streets, which leads to violence or the possibility of violence. Yet, these laws still exist. So no real harm there. 2) My opponent offers no real statistical evidence as to how, when, how often, why, or with who does this happen. No matter how obvious the answer, how do I know this even happens? With no evidence/studies to back it up, I can't look at it as true in this round. It'd be unfair for my opponent to come back in his next speech with evidence, so you must disprove this argument on the spot. 3) Why don't we spend money educating these families while making it legal? You save money on hospital bills, law enforcement, etc, along with improving the confidence of the American citizen by making him or her feel educated on the topic. This is the biggest point I'm going to make; when a person has been educated and yet still carries out that act (which isn't wrong at all), they are ACCEPTING THE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES. Like having sex, or committing a crime, people know the possible outcomes, yet when they do them anyways, they're automatically consenting to the outcomes. Otherwise, they would never commit the action in the first place. Now, on to my own arguments. 1) It's An American Ideal To Represent All Beliefs From the moment the country was founded, it's always been an American ideal to represent anything you may believe in. Heck, the pilgrims sailing over here wanted to escape religious persecution and allow for any religion. In modern society today, that still reflects. States country-wide have passed or are trying to pass same-sex marriage laws to allow it. Moreso, religious freedom exists as well, and continues strong to today. The freedom of speech allows everyone to voice their opinions. In states that have passed laws allowing same-sex marriage, they are recognizing the diversity of America. Likewise, we ought to recognize these other diversities in society as well. Incestuous relationships, polygamy, bestiality, the like. These ideas, maybe small, need the same representation everyone else needs as well, so we're morally required to allow that. 2) "Love is love. " Part of the American ideal to allow for any belief is the idea of "love is love. " States that have same-sex marriage believe this to be true; that indeed, there is love and relationships that are mutual outside of a man and a woman. Same-sex marriages surely can have this. However, this same idea can be true outside of just same-sex couples. It's wrong for us to infringe on people who see the relationship between multiple people (polygamy) right, or any other for that matter. For us to infringe and deny that freedom is immorally unjust; we can't be doing that to people.