High school Public Forum Debate resolutions should not confront sensitive religious issues.

This debate will be (if you chose to accept it) in a modified Public Forum format with the rounds as following: 1. first speeches 2. questions ONLY 3. answering those questions 4. closing speeches. For clarification, I will define the terms: High school: Grades 9-12 Public Forum Debate: persuasive and logical arguments in a manner that is accessible to a wide variety of audiences Resolutions: advocacy for solving a problem or establishing a solution Should not: ought not if leads to significant negative reaction Confront: debate Sensitive: historically shown to provoke a negative reaction Religious issues: conflict that stems from religion On to my three contentions. Firstly, Religion is taught in public schools. Not only has the supreme court rules that teaching religion in school is appropriate, it has repeatedly ruled that it is a civic nessesity. Justice Tom Clark wrote "It might as well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparitive religion or of the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilazation. " Regardless of whether a student choses to debate religious topics, they will be exposed to comparitive religious education as they should be. Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston univerisity, said "Even if religion doesn't make sense to you, you can't make sense of the world without knowing something about the world's religions" If schools did not teach about religion, students would have an incomplete grasp on world history. Because they do teach comparitive religion, further exploring the more sensitive aspects in debate can do no harm, only expand the understanding of these issues and the education of those debating them. Secondly, Students are not forced to Debate against their beliefs. Because Debate is a voluntary activity, no student will be forced to debate sensitive religious issues if he does not wish to. If for some reason a student has a problem debating the topic, they can simply chose not to debate that month. These students will not be deprieved of the opportunity to debate, as there are many other forms of debate with different topics that the debater could take part in for that month. Just because a few debaters have an objection to a topic, does not mean that the topic should be censored. The countless other debaters that want to take advantage of multipul benefits of debating sensitive relious should not be denied the opportunity to because of a select group of people. If the debater still wishes to debate in public forum, they can run cases that do not directly adress the sensitive issues. Both of these options are availible to all students, and so debaters are not forced to debate against their beliefs. And third, We should debate sensitve religious issues. Seuanne Dolentz said, "Raising the question of religion and spirituality can start some heated debates, but that doesn't mean they should be avoided. " Religious beliefs are personal beliefs, and like other personal beliefs such as poltical veiws, they should be debated. Aaron Meyers explains that ," Religion is given special privileges in most areas of public life, from politics to casual conversation . .. People treat religion as if it is something immutable, like race or sex, rather than as a choice that a person makes for themselves. " Religious beliefs are views people choose to adopt and like all other views they should be debated to fully understand their merits and downfalls. Refusing to debate about religion and thereby leaving it uncontested, inhibits the dissemination of valuable information and arguments about prominent beliefs that affect many facets of humanity. As Matt Cherry, the Executive Director Of the Council for Secular Humanism said, "religious and philosophical views should be every bit as open to debate and discussion as political beliefs".