Gay marriage should be legal

Thank you! And no offense is taken as to the first sentence. If you don't mind, I will forgo a traditional introduction and dive straight into arguments. You said, "the fact of the matter is 100% of kids are still born by a man and a woman." This is almost, but not quite true. While it is true that a sperm and an egg do currently have to come together in order to make a baby, it completely does not require heterosexual sex. For women, it's easy: they go to a sperm bank and they get fertilized. There might even be a way to use their partner's DNA, I am not aware. Now, with men, unfortunately they will need a surrogate at this point in time, but still, to say that a man HAS TO have sex with a woman to make a baby is somewhat misguided. So while you do need the sex cells from either gender, you don't necessarily need an active member of either gender to make babies. Now, I know it was quite rude of me to not address this in the first argument, so I apologize profusely for that, but somehow it slipped my mind to ask you how it is beneficial to the government to make more babies. Look, the total government expenditure for 2011 is estimated at $6.515 trillion [1], whereas the total government revenue is only $4.303 trillion [2]. This means that the government is losing over $2 trillion a year. Though more people means more taxes, it also means more expenditure. Not to mention, we are on the verge of overpopulation anyway, and the negative effects of overcrowded cities will also cost the government more both to maintain the cities and to deal with unhealthy people. Also, since there aren't enough jobs for our current population, the new population would have even more trouble finding jobs, thereby making less money, thereby paying less in taxes, but still being there to take their toll on society, causing an even greater net loss on them for the government. So, in short, babies don't really help the government, so your argument is kind of pointless. Again, I apologize for not saying this in my last argument. Now, in terms of AIDS, I'm sorry for being so horribly unclear in my argument. I never once meant to insinuate that the government would stop having to fight against AIDS if we legalized gay marriage, but looking back, I completely agree that that is how it looked. What I meant to say is that it will be eradicated (or extremely reduced) much faster. I agree that the government should always be actively funding stem cell research and such, but if the goal is to eradicate AIDS, the government should take all reasonable steps to eradicate it, including legalizing gay marriage. The first step to ending a disease is to stop the spread, and the first step to stopping the spread is slowing it, and this is a good way to slow it. And I completely feel for your friend and he can have my honest support and hope that we will someday be able to see him through to a cure. And I don't believe that people in committed relationships should sleep around, and I do understand that marriage should not have an effect, but I find that the ceremonial or "official" agreement made in marriage will at least make some people feel more faithful, and it certainly wouldn't make people less faithful. Some is better than none. If you believe that marriage causes stress but non-married partnerships don't, which you insinuate, then I don't think that's common sense at all. In terms of gay sex being unnatural, lots of things are unnatural. If we lived our lives completely naturally, we would all die around 30, since we wouldn't have synthetic medicines to keep us alive, we wouldn't have complex surgeries since it's not "natural" to use anesthetics, and we'd all die of exposure since the "natural" way is to live in caves, which are in short supply. Obviously, I'm going to extremes here, but my point is that "unnatural" is not necessarily bad. Having looked at your profile, I noticed that you were a religious person, which is fine, but it does certainly show through in this argument, even though you attempt to connect out of it. I am a very secular Jew, and one of the 52% of Jews who doesn't necessarily believe in God, and I don't believe that any sex is "natural" or "unnatural." They all just exist. Therefore, it must be a religious matter, which means that the government is not constitutionally allowed to act on that theory. And I really hope that your comment about making it illegal to be gay was tongue in cheek. First of all, those laws would be completely useless since we don't have surveillance in people's bedrooms, and also, that would be like making it illegal to be black: being gay is no more of a choice. And I have full confidence that there are many states that would vote to allow gay marriage if given the chance. In Oregon, for instance, a few years ago we passed measure 36 that recognized DOMA. Now, Portland is one of the most progressive cities in the country and approximately half of Oregon's population. Portland even has a gay mayor; the first of any major city. We recently elected a governor who supports full rights for gays. I would be beyond shocked in our voters were to reject gay marriage again. The fervor has built substantially since 2004, and I think that Oregon is certainly ready now, and I'm sure other states are as well. My opponent has argued fantastically, but I'm afraid that in the end, it just doesn't add up. As I said at the very beginning, the burden of proof is actually on Con for this debate, as the current law takes away rights, so it was up to him to explain how it is in the greater good to restrict these rights. Though he did bring up some arguments, they were effectively shown to be fallacious. His argument about heterosexual couples making babies, for instance, is fallacious since homosexual couples can have children if they so choose (not to mention adoption... They could even keep abortions from happening since they would be willing to adopt babies that otherwise would be aborted). Also, though Con claims that it would help the government to have more children, I find that, if anything, more people only hurt us. The AIDS argument was originally from me, so it was supplementary to my argument and not an integral part since I do not have the burden of proof, but Con's main issue in rebutting that one was that he used what he called common sense that was really just an opinion of his that is not necessarily common sense (perhaps Moroni23 sense). However, even if you do choose to agree with Con on the AIDS argument, that means nothing, since that was just one of many reasons why I believe that the current law is hurting us. The central issue is that Con did not provide an effective argument as to why it is so enormously important that we restrict freedom, and for that, there is no reason to vote anything but Pro. Thank you to my opponent for making this a truly interesting debate, bringing in ideas that I had not previously considered, and with that, I give him the floor! 1. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com... 2. http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com...