Gay marriage

1. "My opponent cites the Loving case, which legalized interracial marriage. Lisa Trei of Stanford believes that Loving will ultimately be used to legalize gay marriage because it calls marriage a fundamental human right. " I think PRO and his reference have to be careful about committing the Question Begging fallacy here. YES, it has been determined that you have a fundamental right to marry by supreme court that doesn't mean you have a right to marry your sister or marry polygamously. This is because marriage has a legal conventional definition to it. The right to marry someone of the same sex would have to be established by the Supreme Court first. For example, a bisexual who has this simultaneous feeling for both genders may argue that he has a fundamental right to marry. The answer would be YES, however , at this point in time, he does not have a right to marry two people in a threesome. The point I am trying to make is that the U. S. Supreme Court has always defined marriage to be between a man and a woman for the continuation of society and never did they say that the fundamental right to marry included same sex marriage or even plural marriage. In fact, in both cases, the Supreme Court rejected the existence of such definitions or rights in the past. Since marriage is a fundamental right, would I have the right to marry 80 people ,according to his argument, . .. .. .. .YES and that's why his claim is fallacious. In Murphy v. Ramsey (1885) the U. S. Supreme Court stated: "[C]ertainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to rank as one of the coordinate state of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one MAN and one WOMAN in the holy state of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of the reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. " Griswold v. Connecticut (1965): Mr. Justice Douglas, author of the majority opinion, wrote that this criminal statute "operates directly on an intimate relation of HUSBAND and WIFE," 381 U. S. 482, 85 S. Ct. 1680, 14 L. Ed.2d 513, In a separate opinion for three justices, Mr. Justice Goldberg similarly abhorred this state disruption of "the traditional relation of the family--a relation as old and as fundamental as our entire civilization. " 381 U. S. 496, 85 S. Ct. 1688 This quote is from Bertrand Russell : "But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex. .. .. . .. it is of children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution. " 5 years after the Loving decision, The U. S. Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson regarding the issue of Same sex marriage reiterates this point in 1972: "The institution of marriage as a union man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis. Skinner V. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535, 541, 62 S. Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L. Ed. 1655, 1660 (1942), which invalidated Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act on equal protection grounds, stated in part: "Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. " This historic institution manifestly is more deeply founded than the asserted contemporary concept of marriage and societal interests for which petitioners contend. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a charter for RESTRUCTURING it by judicial LEGISLATION. " 2. "60 year old women cannot have children. Period. The State would not need to do fertility tests to determine this. And yet 60 year olds, 70 year olds, 80 year olds, 90 year olds, etc can all marry, even though they cannot procreate. " The availability of long-term fertility﻿ treatments, even in post-menopausal pregnancies, establishing infertility is all but medically impossible. There are reports of women at the age of 70 or 79 giving birth, so what PRO is saying is FALSE. Even if we accept his claim as true and we would not need an invasive test for post menopausal women, It would still require additional resources to verify whether they are in fact truly infertile unlike with same sex couples: . http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com... 3. "gay couples can procreate, just not with each other. I don't understand why the state would be concerned whether both parents are a DNA match with the child. " PRO is WRONG again. Procreation by definition is "Sexual reproduction typically requires the involvement of TWO individuals or gametes, one each from opposite type of sex". Therefore, any third party help would not be considered procreation: . http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. "Do youngsters have less premarital sex because of the traditional view of marriage? Answer: NO - 80% of teen pregnancies are unintended. Do people abstain from sex until marriage? Answer: NO - 90% of people engage in premarital sex" Well this is just more of a reason why we need to promote traditional marriage at an early age rather than redefine marriage. Remember, two wrongs don't make a right. 5. "The Supreme Court have never ruled directly on gay marriage" FALSE Since Baker was on MANDATORY appellate review, this was not just any dismissal. A "dismissal for want of a substantial federal question" is a decision on the merits that is binding in cases like Hicks v. Miranda. They clearly outline that summary decisions are in fact decisions on the merits that are binding on all lower FEDERAL courts. Thus, the same-sex union as a constitutional right argument was so frivolous them the U. S supreme court rejected it without any further review. Not to mention, this ruling was UNANIMOUSLY decided by essentially the same court in Loving. If they don't think your arguments that are exactly the same verbatim from the past warrant any merit, then why should anybody take your side serious. I urge VOTERS to not listen to PRO when he says Baker is not a U. S. supreme court decision and research it yourself. There are plenty of state and federal courts that acknowledge Baker's precedent. Here is one of those federal courts: Wilson v. Ake in 2005: "The Supreme Court has not explicitly or implicitly overturned its holding in Baker or provided the lower courts, including this Court, with any reason to believe that the holding is invalid today. " 6. "In Denmark, for example, . . . [a]fter the 1989 passage of the registered-partner law, the marriage rate continued to climb; Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they've been since the early 1970's. " Civil unions does not constitute as a social experiment which is what Denmark and Danish along with many other countries he mentioned actually legalized not same sex marriage, so this argument does not count. As far as those other countries that legalize gay marriage, their marriage rates are probably higher now, but what we've seen with the Netherlands ,which is the first country to legalize it much sooner, that those marriage high rates will not last for long. 7. "cohabitation has increased meaning more couples are living together before marriage. But they still get married in the end. " Yeah but they don't stay married and thats the problem with living in a state of cohabitation according to studies. 8. "Separate but equal for the sexes" We can always make sure that civil unions have all the same rights (including federal) down the future just like we did and still do with most separate institutions for the Sexes. In Conclusion, Its pretty clear who won this debate. All PRO has been trying to do throughout this debate is misrepresent, twist, and strawman my arguments in order to salvage what's left of his position.