Resolved: Homosexuality has no virtue.

Thanks for the last post. Again, my opponent fails to put forward a single convincing argument to support his resolution, and has not correctly understood his own resolution. Firstly, he seems to be under the impression that 'homosexuality' is an 'act'. It is not an act, it is a sexual orientation. Homosexuality is not hard to define, and I did not say that it was; it can be very simply defined as being sexually orientated towards a person of the same gender. The opponent's resolution which I agreed to debate is 'homosexuality has no virtue'. It was not 'homosexual acts have no virtue'. The opponent also seems to be under the incorrect understanding of the term homosexuality as refering only to sexual relations between men. It does not, in can also to sexual relations between women. The prefix Homo- means 'the same' and the prefix hetero- means 'different'. The opponent attempts to argue that homosexuality is undesirable based on some prejudicial assertions about homosexuals which look as if they have been lifted from religiously-motivated propaganda, and mentions that the psychologists viewed homosexuality as a disease until the 1970s. He also stated that homosexuals constituted only a very small potion of the general population, and points out that homosexual acts do not produce offspring. None of these arguments can sustain his argument that homosexuality has no virtue, and at any rate, are based on logical fallicies. Firstly, to say that a homosexual's entire being is sexual is totally nonsensical. If this was true, and not just a piece of rather silly psuedo-scientific wordplay, it would mean that a homosexual could do nothing apart from engage in sexual acts. Of course this is nonsense, as anyone can see that many homosexual people do all kinds of things which are not related to sexual activities, in exactly the same way that heterosexual people do. My opponent contradicts himself in his own post, since he acknowledges that a homosexual person can have virtue. Given this, isn't it totally meaningless to say that a homosexual person's 'entire being is sexual?' My opponent is correct to say that the psychological establishment, like the society of the time, viewed homosexuality as a disease. However, what he didn't say, is that mainstream psychological practice has since completely abandoned that position based on its own scientific and clinical observations. The overwhelming majority of qualified psychological practioners and researchers would now consider homosexuality and homosexual acts to be firmly in the normal spectrum, and don't consider homosexual relationships to be qualitatively different to heterosexual relationships, and therefore, containing basically the same virtues and vices that those relationships can give rise to. The opponent mentions that homosexuals are a minority.Whether or not something is minority behavior has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is ethical, virtuous or none virtuous. So why does he even mention it? The opponent states that homosexuality does produce offspring. However, this is not a vice in itself. It does not impair the ability of heterosexuals to reproduce, and as my opponent states, homosexuals are small group of the populace, so it shouldn't result in catastrophic depopulation. My opponent states that homosexuality is against natural law and design, but how does he know for certain that homosexuality is an inbuilt biological mechanism to avoid catastrophic over-population (a much more serious threat than underpopulation in the current age) My opponent seemed to suggest that if a person had a homosexual orientation, the ethical way to respond to it was to live a celibate life, but this would also result in no children being born, so from my opponent's perspective it is just as much as a vice, so my opponent is just using this argument to excuse his prejudice against homosexuals. What's more, at this point I could clearly identify a virtue of homosexuality. While there is not a shortage of babies being born, there is a shortage of two parent families to raise them. Firmly established homosexual relationships can, and in this day and age often do, provide a two-parent home to raise children. My opponent mentions that sexual activity between has greater health risks attached to it than heterosexual sex. However, this does have much bearing on how whether or not it has no virtue. For example, horse-riding is more dangerous than swimming, but we cannot say that horse-riding is devoid of virtue and we are ethically obliged not to do it. Furthermore, sexual acts between women are also included in the term homosexuality. Lesbian relationships are often more stable than hetereo sexual ones, and lesbian sexual acts are much less likely to result in transmission of VD than hetereosexual contact, so would my opponent reccomend lesbian sexual activities? He also seems to be making a prejudcial assumption that all homosexual men are promiscuous and engage in anal sex. Many express themselves sexually with much lower risk behaviors. My opponent acknowledged that homosexual activity can have more to it than just sexual activity (this in itself causes him to forfeit his resolution), but then suggests that the sexual part can simply be abstracted away from the relationship and only the virtues of friendship will remain. However, I think he is incorrect about this, since sexual activity constitutes a type of engagement between two (or more) people that operates on a different, perhaps deeper level than a platonic friendship. In other words, both homosexual and heterosexual activity is a complex thing, and can bring forth unique virtues. My opponent needs to make a case to say that this does not apply to homosexual activity the same that it applies to hetereosexual activities. If he cannot, he forfeits the debate. So, to summarise, my opponent has played a semantic game with the meaning of the word homosexuality. He seemed rather interested in dictionary definitions in the first round, so I suggest he looks up the meaning of the word homosexuality. The debate has to stay within the limits of the resolution put forth in the first round. Even if he wants to maintain (incorrectly) that the term 'homosexuality' is limited to 'homosexual acts between men', I think I have introduced reasonoble doubt that even these can have some virtue to result in the resolution being unsustainable. I look forward to my opponent's reply. Thank you!