Homophobia is a natural disease avoidance behavior. Therefore, homophobia is good for humans

Pro presents to you a long list of sources which he believes support his resolution. Unfortunately, that's all that R1 for Pro consisted of; he merely lists sources which ostensibly support certain premises. The resolution seems to take the form of a syllogism, yet I find all of Pro's eggs in the basket of supporting the premise, "Homophobia is a natural disease avoidance behavior", instead of the link to "homophobia is good for humans". Furthermore, it may be my computer acting up, but I cannot follow the plethora of sources to any actual article (I'm just led to the front page of each website). But I'll go into some offense for a while. Framework: What is "good" for humans?Saying that something is "good" is an inherently normative statement. It is an effort to attach value to a particular thing or idea, and in the context of "good for humans", we must assume that humans are the beneficiaries of the thing in question, namely homophobia. But what is "good" for humans ought not be based solely on evolutionary considerations. The mere fact that we attach value to humanity and attempt to promote what benefits humanity and repudiate what does not suggests that there is something inherently valuable about human lives and the human species. We can approach this from two philosophical angles: deontology and utilitarianism. I firmly believe that Pro's resolution is objectively wrong from a deontological perspective and almost certainly erroneous from a utiliarian perspective. A. DeontologyLet's turn to Kant, the quintessential deontological philosopher. Kant argues that we should respect humans as ends in and of themselves because humans have inherent value (obviously an oversimplification, but character limit). Even if Con won that homphobia has some value for our species, we in the process renege on our moral duties to homosexual people by failing to respect their humanity and their inherent worth. I wouldn't go so far as to say homophobia reduces them to means to an end, but that it dehumanizes people, and that a moral theory which promotes what is "good" for humans while ignoring certain humans is inherently contradictory and flawed, treating homosexual people as less than ends. Check up on the Kant Man here:http://plato.stanford.edu...B. UtilitarianismWhen discussing what is utile for humans, we must consider all humans. Just to be clear, homosexual people are still people (If Pro attempts to argue that homosexual individuals carry less moral weight than heterosexual individuals, he will have to warrant a powerful philosophical distinction rooted in sexual preference). And homophobia leads to some pretty deplorable consequences for these people. High rate of hate crimes towards LGBT individuals: http://www.civilrights.org...As Pro mentions, there is a high rate of mental illness amongst the LGBT community, and this leads to rates of suicide far higher than the general populace. The tendency of homophobia to foster adversarial atmospheres and environments in which homosexual individuals feel unwelcomed and "otherized" leads to such outcomes. http://www.cdc.gov...When a large portion of humanity is treated as subhuman, denied rights in innumerable countries, and violently persecuted worldwide, humanity loses. In many countries, it is possible for mere sexual preference to be met with the death penalty. https://www.washingtonpost.com...When homophobia leads the literal termination of human life, the very object of utilitarian consideration, we should probably recognize its disutility. Even when considering humanity as a whole, we can acknowledge the fact that homophobia and contempt towards any particular group of individuals in general creates rifts between humans, serving to make cooperation and coexistence more difficult. I will tackle the potential utilitarian benefits for humanity in the rebuttal section. Rebuttal: While Pro's first round consists primarily of links to certain websites preceded by summaries of articles presumably on those sites, I will attempt to construct (and subsequently deconstruct) the broader argument Pro gives. Note that some sites have an unclear connection to Pro's points, such as the link to the National Center for Biotechnology Information succeeding the point about disgust as the embodiment of moral judgment (which I wish Pro would expound upon). The argument appears to go something like this: Homophobia is disgust, disgust protects us from diseases, homosexuals have diseases, therefore homophobia is good. Unfortunately, the links between these premises are, as mentioned earlier, tenuous, as is the link to the conclusion. I will not contest any premise on face. I will concede that homophobia is probably more rooted in disgust than in fear. I will concede that the evolutionary purpose of disgust is protection from bad things, such as disease, and I will concede that many diseases are found in the LGBT community at higher rates than the general populace. HOWEVER, to outweigh the harms incurred by humans as a result of homophobia, Pro must establish a unique link between homophobia and disease avoidance, that is to say a connection which would not exist if homophobia did not exist. 1. The uniqueness of homophobia Pro attempts to convince you that homosexuals are out to seduce heterosexuals, and that homophobia is our only natural protection against this. Utter nonsense. A lack of physical attraction easily suffices. There is no need to become physically ill at the thought of two men or women engaging in intercourse. Does Pro really believe that it is only homophobic individuals who turn down sexual advances from members of the same sex? Furthermore, homophobia is often associated with disgust towards homosexual acts between other individuals, yet Pro can only cite disease associated with intercourse, suggesting that homophobia extends its disgust beyond what is even plausibly evolutionarily advantageous into the realm of the private lives of other individuals who otherwise may not have engaged with you. Discount Pro's sources regarding homosexual advances towards heterosexuals as irrelevant unless he can produce sources suggesting that a lack of homophobia triggers reciprocation from heterosexuals. 2. Evolution and HomophobiaEven if you grant Pro the uniqueness of homophobia, it is unclear what exactly we're avoiding. Disgust may be broadly valuable, but each instance of disgust is not inherently valuable. If, as Pro seems to imply with reference to the evolutionary origins of disgust, homophobia evolved as a response to higher rates of STDs amongst homosexuals, then this evolution would have occurred over a long period of time, a long time ago. HIV is relatively young amongst humanity: http://www.avert.org...Furthermore, it is likely that STD rates are so high amongst LGBT individuals because protective measures, such as condoms, serve only one purpose (there is a contraceptive motive during heterosexual intercourse). Of course, contraception isn't old enough to trigger evolutionary responses. But even if homophobia once served a purpose, that does not mean that homophobia IS good for humans, just that it once was. Honestly, Pro's assertion that the ultimate gratification of seduction of heterosexuals led to the evolution of homophobia is absurd. It assumes a latent desire, inherent in all homosexual individuals, to seduce someone who you can't reproduce with merely because they are attracted to people with whom they could reproduce. Of course, even if you don't buy any of this, Pro still has to outweigh persecution of homosexual people today with a concept that ostensibly helped us out in the past. The resolution isn't "homophobia was good". Pro has a lot of work to do to dig himself out of this hole.