Marriage is a Civil Right.

Thank you for your reply. I am pleased that my opponent has accepted the definition that a civil right "derives from the inherent dignity of the human person." I am just as pleased that my opponent has stipulated to the the fact that marriage is defined differently, according to culture, race, gender, and in some parts of the world (including ours) from neighbor to neighbor. Since all humans are created equal (regardless of whether everyone in the world holds certain truths to be self-evident), a civil right defined as one derives from inherent human dignity must apply EQUALLY to all humans. To say otherwise would be to deny that humans are created equal, and no one wants to take on that debate. The simple fact - and one that we've conclusively established in this debate - is that the fact that marriage is defined differently means it does not and cannot derive from an inherent human right. In fact, the very fact that marriage has to be defined AT ALL makes it little more than a product of human imagination. My opponent has offered no evidence to show that humans are genetically or biologically driven to marry (as opposed to a biological drive to mate, which is not the subject of this debate), nor has he offered any evidence that the formal joining of two individuals somehow derives from our right to exist. My opponent attempted to corner me in his last rebuttal by demanding that I define marriage as a civil or political right. I do not need to do this to win this debate. What I have done in this debate is show that not only is marriage not a civil right, it's not even a legal right, a protected right, or a free choice in many parts of the world (again, see USA, your next door neighbor, etc.). My opponent's painstaking attempt to parse words in two of the credible sources I cited amounts to little more than an exercise in semantics and very much misses the larger point. For example, my opponent attempted to support his side by going through great pains to show that the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights mentions marriage. As such, my opponent argues that therefore marriage must be recognized as either a civil right, a political right, or both. If this debate were about whether the authors of this document - or the U.N. as a whole - believed marriage was a civil right, then he would be on the road to building a potentially winnable case. That case would fail, of course, because of the very lack of definition that my opponent conceded long ago. His argument completely fails in this debate, of course, because we are arguing about whether marriage is a civil right, not how a particular document relates marriage to its accepted definition of a civil right. In other words, it sems clear to me that the authors of this particular document simply came to the same conclusion that I have here: while it would be nice if marriage were a civil right, a "right" that applies to some but not all can hardly be defined as a right at all. The rules of this debate do not stiplulate that we must confine the debate to my sources, (which by the way, remain credible). To prove his case, my opponent must cite and produce compelling evidence to prove his point, which he has failed to do. So because my opponent has failed to prove why marriage is a civil right, and has just been nitpicking on my sources this entire time, all my arguements still stand, and his failure to produce any in the first place must be acknowledged when judging this round. There is really nothing more to say about this topic, with that said, I'm once again very pleased with this debate and would like to debate sherlockmethod in future rounds. Thank you for giving your time to debate me on whether or not marriage is a civil right. It was a fun debate, and that's what it's supposed to be. So, for all of these reasons and more, marriage is simply not a civil right.