Homosexual Marriage should be legalized by the United States Government.

First I will post my case, then I will debate your points, also voters, please keep a open mind on this. Contention 1. Marriage Sub Point A-What it is "No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman.", according to http://www.vatican.va... Marriage is an institution of religion that should not be state regulated. The state has an institution of it's own called "Civil Unions". The state should recognize civil unions between same sex couples, since they should be afforded the same rights under government as any other partnership (i.e. marriage). The idea of marriage should be defined only in the context of religious beliefs and the state should not have any power over what the church deems as appropriate or inappropriate. So the Gov't should not intrude on the churches laws. Sub Point B-Reproduction According to http://findarticles.com... "A husband is, until otherwise proven, the acknowledged father of his wife's off-spring, with recognized rights and duties that may vary from society to society but always exist in some form. And a wife is a woman who can expect a certain specified sort of help from her husband in the raising of her off-spring. All other functions of marriage borrow from or build upon this one. Even marriage among those past child-rearing age or otherwise infertile draws on notions of partnership and mutual aid that have their primary roots in the experience of shared biological parenthood...Disputes over fatherhood, for example, or variations in parental attachment to their children, make it reasonable for societies to supplement and sometimes override the natural bonds established by and through the processes of human generation. Marriage is, before all else, the practice by which human societies mark, modify, and occasionally mask these bonds." , Which means that it is based on reproducing, Homosexuals can't reproduce. Sub Point C-Institution of marriage Little A-Love According to http://www.freerepublic.com... "The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis cant it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction that love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.", so the logical basis of marriage will be gone. Little B- Polygamy According to http://www.weeklystandard.com... "If gays had a right to marry, why not polygamists?... Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly. The bottom of this slope is visible from where we stand. Advocacy of legalized polygamy is growing. A network of grass-roots organizations seeking legal recognition for group marriage already exists. The cause of legalized group marriage is championed by a powerful faction of family law specialists. Influential legal bodies in both the United States and Canada have presented radical programs of marital reform. Some of these quasi-governmental proposals go so far as to suggest the abolition of marriage. The ideas behind this movement have already achieved surprising influence with a prominent American politician...The [Tom] Green trial in 2001 was not just a cable spectacle. It brought out a surprising number of mainstream defenses of polygamy. And most of the defenders went to bat for polygamy by drawing direct comparisons to gay marriage...Writing in the Village Voice, gay leftist Richard Goldstein equated the drive for state-sanctioned polygamy with the movement for gay marriage. The political reluctance of gays to embrace polygamists was understandable, said Goldstein, but our fates are entwined in fundamental ways....Syndicated liberal columnist Ellen Goodman took up the cause of polygamy with a direct comparison to gay marriage...Stephen Clark, the legal director of the Utah ACLU, has said, 'Talking to Utah's polygamists is like talking to gays and lesbians who really want the right to live their lives.", This means a vote for the neg is a vote for polygamy. Contention 2-Economics According to http://www.freerepublic.com... "When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse's social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse's health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between to unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children." Adam Kolasinksi "The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage" 2/20/04 - "Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society." . It is going to damage are already shaky economy. What you need to look at in this debate is that making same sex marriage legal will hurt are economy,hurt what marriage stands for and will promote polygamy. Please, don't let it happen, I know I may sound bad, but look at the facts, not your own personal beliefs. Also my opponent has no sources to back up his claims, so I will negate his points next about diversity and religion.