Same-sex marriage is wrong.

Minor Contentions: ..I am not arguing against same-sex marriage simply because straight marriage is tradition, but because there is ample evidence that it provides the best family structure for children, thereby benefitting the next generation... historical evidence is what I was basing my argument on... there is a tradition of evidence that two biological commited parents is the best structure for a child. Have heterosexual couples been the primary care takers and parents for most of (western) civilization? Yes. Have they been successful at parenting? Probably. However, we should primarily concern ourselves with how RELATIVELY successful they have been. In this regard you cannot really rely on history to provide a clear picture; homosexuals have been a persecuted group for a very long time with some of the earliest written laws against homosexuality being found in Leviticus, Middle Assyrian law codes, and Early Germanic law. [1] And while you can point to periods of tolerance towards homosexuality, they are certainly not the rule. Presently, homosexuality is still a criminal offence in many parts of Asia, and Africa, and the punishment for homosexuality can be as severe as death. While the picture is remarkably different in the West, the West has still been slow to warm to the idea of homosexuality; many western countries chose not to decriminalize homosexuality until the mid twentieth century, and in many of those countries homosexuals are not allowed to marry, and not allowed to adopt children [2]. The result of all of this surmounts to a moot point; you cannot look to recorded history and say it provides evidence of the superiority of heterosexual parentage, when throughout history homosexuals have been persecuted and same-sex couples have been denied the opportunity to adopt, and parent children. I... should have said "Thousands of years of EVIDENCE exist to show marriage as an alliance between two families" that show marriage as a permament monogamous relationship between a man and a woman for the benefit of society. I was really arguing more about the definition of the term marriage... This statement is factually incorrect; marriage has not always been defined as a monogamous bond between a man and a woman, even in the past. Assuming my opponent's apparent ethnocentricity, let’s look at Christianity. The Old Testament contains numerous examples of polygamy; one such example is Soloman, who is described as having 700 wives. In addition to just examples of polygamy, the Pentateuch also lists guidelines and rules concerning the taking of multiple wives. [3] This doesn’t even begin to address the radically different conceptualizations of marriage that exist in non-western cultures. I posit that a child being raised by gay parents is like a person trying to survive while missing body parts. Children are created by a man and a woman, so the parents are in a way a "part" of that child. A person needs all their body parts to function properly, i.e. function in the BEST way possible because the human body was DESIGNED to function that way. Now if a person is missing a limb or an internal organ, it is certainly POSSIBLE for them to live, however this would not be the IDEAL way to live... (This argument is eating up too much of my remaining characters to post in its entirety, use Ctrl + F to view it in its entirety.) Okay, this argument is very peculiar. This entire argument hinges on the premise that being raised by gay parents is analogous to being without a body part. He justifies his premise by saying that because children are created though men and women having sex, the parents are, in a way, a part of the child. This is a pretty poor justification; with the integrity of this argument resting upon this premise, my opponent does not provide adequate justification for why his premise should be considered justified, and thus this entire argument kind of collapses in on itself. Apparently pro gay-marriage people love to ignore common sense and use flawed studies to promote their flawed agenda, as well as steamrolling people who dare to disagree with them. You"re engaging in a blatant authority fallacy here. Your main defense of your position is "because the most popular guys in white lab coats said it, it must be true, and anybody who says they are wrong is an idiot", as well as stating that Loren et al. have an anti-gay marriage agenda. Everybody has an agenda, the only question is whether it is good or bad. The question is whether the agenda is motivated by critical thinking and rational examination or what will get daytime TV ratings. You"re kidding yourself if you don"t think that the APA and these academic journals had a pro gay-marriage bias to begin with. Okay, let’s get a couple of things straight here: Firstly, the point that I was trying to make in the prior round was that the studies you have cited to justify your claims are flawed in nature. I then linked to a video and an article which discuss why the methodology is flawed, and why other researchers took exception to the methodology employed in the two studies that you referenced. In the article that you linked to about Regnerus, it discusses the very problems that I brought up: “The definition of what it means to have a homosexual parent is also a loose one in this study--by necessity, in order to maximize the sample size of homosexual parents. Not all of those who reported that a parent was in a same-sex relationship even lived with that parent during the relationship; many who did, did not live with the partner as well. Only 23% of those with a lesbian mother, and only 2% of those with a homosexual father, had spent as long as three years living in a household with the homosexual parent and the parent's partner at the same time.” This was my contention! The study’s methodology is flawed, because the definition of what constitutes same-sex parentage is so broad that it actually tells very little about the effects that having same sex parents actually has on the outcomes and development of children. In fact, this study tells us more about what effect broken heterosexual homes have on children, rather than what effect same-sex parents have on children. I never said they were wrong because they have any kind of agenda; please refrain from committing libel, thanks. Secondly, I never once used the APA to justify any of my arguments and it is for this reason, in combination with the fact that I do not want to fall victim to the ‘Gish Gallop,’ that I am going to refrain from addressing any of the attacks that you have made against them. Major Contention: Even if I were to accept all of the arguments that you have made in the prior rounds as valid and true, they would do very little to butress the argument that you are supposed to be putting forward. You are supposed to be arguing that "Same-sex marriage is wrong," yet all of your arguments have been against allowing same-sex couples to raise children. Nothing in the definition of marriage that you have provided in the first round suggests that the rearing and raising of children is inseperable from marriage. The only argument that you have offered up that links the two together is that "Marriage is about procreation and the propagation of society. Men and women got married so that they could reproduce and provide a safe, stable environment to raise their children, as well as continuing society...Therefore, if everybody were gay then society would eventually die off as no one would be able to reproduce." That was not an argument against same-sex marriage, that was an argument against everyone being homosexual, and it used a fallacous appeal to tradition and nature to support its premise. This is in addition to its flawed conclusion, as was addressed in R1. Thank You. Sources: [1]http://tinyurl.com... [2]http://tinyurl.com... [3]http://en.wikipedia.org...