Creating laws in support of gay marriage would create discrimination against church leaders

My opponent takes my arguments out of context so much it's frankly kind of sickening. This is a clear attempt to manipulate votes away from perfectly good arguments I have made. Of course, he is doing this under the assumption that the majority of the votes he would get would be from people who are biased towards his position, which makes the decision to manipulate readers/voters even more confusing and troubling. Here are his latest offenses on this and you, the reader can see for your self: "He may even use a source like this[1] to manipulate and deceive like he tried when he disputed and accused me of deviating from the debate topic by using "Church" and "church leaders" interchangeably. No deviation was committed or intended. I was responding based on your contextualization and loose verbiage, but from the direction you are taking this debate it seems like church leaders aren't the isolated topic here. If they are, this is very harming to your side, as you have been adamantly arguing about the (non specific assumed Christian) church itself as opposed the leaders there-in. Also citing a source not used for valid contention of your arguments, or a direct argument that I made or showed any intention of making, is a clear attempt at source-bombing. But in direct response to that, you cannot choose your sexual desires either, meaning that if choice is a valid argument in this discussion, you have once again harmed your case. There is no conclusive evidence that one is born gay. Nor have I said there is, but that also doesn't go on to prove that they aren't as well, in which as the instigator of this premise, you hold the BOP. In any regards, you just stated that one's choice is important, regardless of how they are born. If this is the case, you should be all for legality of gay marriage. Essentially, he is comparing apples and oranges. There ARE cases where discrimination is perfectly OK. If you were hiring someone to oversee an after school program or a teacher, would you really consider hiring a pedophile? In saying that discrimination is okay, you forget that I also didn't say discrimination was unanimously not okay. Weighing discrimination is comparing apples to apples perfectly in this equation, as the underlining point is discriminating homosexuality IS wrong. Because pedophilia is viewed as wrong by most of society while homosexuality isn't, the debate goes on to establish why denying a group of equal people rights is more important than not? Such are questions that have been addressed multiple time in this debate. " What my opponent has done here is called cherry picking. He takes select parts of an argument and manipulates and twists them to suit his own needs, wants and desires. "But in direct response to that, you cannot choose your sexual desires either, meaning that if choice is a valid argument in this discussion, you have once again harmed your case. " While I agree that sexual desire is not necessarily chosen, it is the acting upon such desires that is chosen. In a source I cited in my previous round, this is illustrated. No harm was done to my case because of this fact. Example: You can have a predisposition to anger, perhaps expressing it in violent ways, but in knowing it is wrong you can chose not to act upon it. This is a paraphrase of Rick Warren in an interview with Piers Morgan, which can be found here[1] This just furthers my case that there is a difference in the discrimination of race, ethnicity, age, gender etc and sexual preference. More misrepresentations: "My opponent, unsurprisingly, misses the point of 1 Cor 6:11 entirely. The sin is forgiven, washed away in a sense, however turning from sin is also a very important. According to bible. org, gays should be accepted into the foundation so that the turning of that sin is even possible. By casting them out, you are taking an [expletive] on Christian ideals. Receiving the message of what qualifies as sin and turning from sin is of the utmost importance. So you should agree that gays should be invited into the church, so that they can be taught that message and be cured of their sin. According to the original quote, that is not the intention of Pastor Carr. " Actually my opponent has also taken these things out of context. Here is where we seem to agree: gays should be invited into the church so they can be taught a message of repentance and forgiveness and be able to turn away from their sin. Now here is the misrepresentation and out of context happens: performing a marriage ceremony for a gay couple goes against what they (the church, church leaders) believe and validating what they view to be sin as something that is right and good does not in anyway shape or form teach a message of repentance or forgiveness and does not encourage one to turn away from their sin. In merely saying that the bible contradicts itself shows my opponent does not have an understanding of the bible and thus is in no place to argue about its contents. He basically has contradicted himself. This statement is without an argument for justification, therefore irrelevant. " Again, my opponent resorts to cherry picking. "My opponent not only has no knowledge of the bible, but current events as well. [5] Persecution of Christians happens all over the world. In China[6] In the middle east[7]. Articles 5-8 do not show discrimination through gay marriage, and are largely irrelevant. In fact the discrimination in every single source, mainly cites discrimination from countries with pre-dominate RELIGIONS already in place. Religion is being discriminated by other religions, in which case I don't really have to care. " I have no clue what silliness my opponent is doing here. Regardless, I was giving examples, extreme examples, of how Christians are discriminated against. My opponent wants to "weigh the impact of discrimination", which I felt was a largely silly contention from the start. He didn't do a very good job of stating that case, none the less I suppose he was trying to make claims that Christians are not discriminated against at all, or at least not as much as gays. I was merely proving the opposite. There are several other things in my opponent's arguments that I could debunk, but I am running out of room and there is one thing in particular that I wanna point out: "Absolutely! The guy was standing there with a sign. Probably the least violent action one can take outside of sleeping. It was the gay rights advocates who attacked him. As you see, he didn't even try to fight back. It does not matter if one of them or all of them had a history of criminal activity. Attacking someone physically, outside of protecting oneself from potential physical harm, is never ok. A few things wrong with this. The guy's side said something threatening. Yes, saying "repent or else" is a direct threat. If I followed you around with a sign that said "let me take your sister to bed. .. or else. .. " you would have a reason to be pissed off at me too. However, that is still not the issue. The issue is that a man with a criminal history of violence instigated the physical attack, and he or anyone else there shouldn't be the representative for an entire group of individuals. However, in this article (11) a pastor and a bunch of deacons attacked a gay couple in largely the same way that happened to the Christian in your video. Equally if I wanted to source bomb every instance of gay victims of religious violence, I could. The point is, that a few individuals do not make up an entire culture of people. " When he says "the guys side said something threatening. Yes, saying 'repent or else' is a direct threat", first I believe my opponent meant sign, not side, second, I doubt my opponent even remotely knows what is meant by "repent or else". Does it mean A. The man holding the sign will do something? B. The man has a group of people that are waiting in the wings to do something? C. That the man is referring to God's Judgement and what God will do in response to the gays not turning from their sin? If you guessed C, you are correct. The "or else" part of the sign is indirect, not direct. My opponent has mistaken an indirect threat for a direct threat. Furthermore, my opponents last sentence "The point is, that a few individuals do not make up an entire culture of people. " is counter intuitive to his case. He has spent a portion of each of his rounds trying to convince that the entire Christian community is a vile hate mongering community. That sentence above he made contradicts each argument he made supporting his claim that Christians are more discriminatory than gays, which isn't even what the debate is about. In summation, my opponent has clearly tried to deceive and manipulate me as well as anyone who would read this. He tried flipping the debate around to suit his needs in order to attempt to make better arguments for himself. He took my arguments out of context and cherry picked. I took the bait, but yet he failed to successfully negate any of my arguments. He turned the debate into who was being discriminated more and did not even try to prove how laws in support of gay marriage would not be discriminatory to church leaders. I hope this is taken note of.