The user known as Danielle used dishonest tactics in her same-sex parenting debate.

Con deserves a conduct loss for her opening rant and insults. Mocking a mutally agreed upon debate when her solution was to simply argue about it in private messages is ridiculous. She agreed to it, and I think that she has an obligation to debate without mockery because she was upset I wasn't willing to do it in private. Hope it was worth it. Now, on to the debate (please note that in the quotes I am Con and she is Pro). Danielle's first tactic was the resolution exploitation. There may be some confusion over this one; let me clarify that I am not accusing her just of holding up examples of successful gay parenting but also forcing the burden of disproving it onto me. "None of these qualities are exclusive to heterosexuals. There seem to be no qualifications of a good parent that a gay person can not possess." My response: "Technically they can, but I am saying that this is generally not the case. If you are saying that it is "possible" that gays can raise well adjusted children, I point out that it is also possible that beating kids is a good method for discipline (seeing as there must be at least a few success stories in the world). Wasn't this mentioned in the comments?" Her response: "There are no parenting traits a heterosexual can possess that a gay person can not. Con wasted space saying I was exploiting the word "can" in the resolution (based on Mirza"s comments). My point is that any quality or trait you associate with good parenting - i.e., responsible, caring, loving, etc. - can be possessed by gay people. Ergo, good parenting qualities or techniques are not limited to heterosexual parents. Con never negated this idea; he dropped this contention and chose to whine about something irrelevant." My final response: "We were discussing if homosexuality was harmful and whether children needed a mother and a father. Simply because homosexuals CAN possess those attributes does not mean that they necessarily will, and it completely ignores the fact that the capability of having those attributes does not mean that a proportionate number of them WILL have those attributes." This is quite obviously lawyering. Her second exploitation was to say that same-sex couple could raise families more effectively than SINGLE-PARENT families: "There have been numerous studies indicating that children raised by 2 parents have more success and less emotional or behavioral problems than their single-parent counterparts." My response: "Of course having a two-parent family is better than one. The economic benefits alone help children. Irrelevant." Her response: "No, it's relevant because two gay parents can raise children just as well as two staight parents. I've included a psychological study that confirmed this. Con seems to agree. The point goes to Pro." Later: "I included a study validating that 2 same-sex parents provide the same benefits to parenting that 2 heterosexual parents do: double the resources, emotional support, etc. Con said this too was irrelevant, but it proves that what parents provide and not their sexuality is what matters." She lied. The source was purely about two parent families vs single parent families. While same-sex couples were tested, te study was neither designed nor capable of establishing that same-sex couples could raise children "just" as well as tradtional couples, and never claimed to be. Here it is: [http://turnstylenews.com...] Here's another golden argument: "There are plenty of people raised by gay parents who have had great experiences and turned out very well adjusted." And, quoting someone who was raised by same-sex parents: "My parents can throw a baseball and take me hiking just as well as any man could. I've always had a plethora of male role models. I never felt that I was missing anything by not having that dad for me." Kids with gay parents aren't missing out on these things." Me: "Anecdotal evidence only shows the limits of what is or can be possible. Pro concedes this later on and I'm baffled as to why she brought it up in the first place." Her: "The real purpose of this point was to combat the notion that children needed two opposite-sex parental figures in order to gain certain benefits." "Just because someone *can* turn out well adjusted, it does not follow that most will. You have reached a generalization based on insufficient evidence." Now look: "The exact same comment can be applied to kids with heterosexual parents. They CAN turn out fine, but there are no guarantees." This is an obvious smoke-and-mirror tactic. Danielle then made this argument: "On that note, much like adopted parents, gay parents typically have to go out of their way to have kids (i.e. in vitro fertilization). Meanwhile 50% of heterosexual babies are unplanned. Psychologist Abbie Clark explains, "That translates to greater commitment on average and more involvement"." I responded: "This is ridiculous; simply because it is a problem does not mean it is inherent in that entire style of relationship, nor does it mean that such a flaw will never be fixed or that unplanned pregnancies will never be stopped. By this logic the argument about kids getting teased is perfectly legitimate." Her response: "Basically Con just negated the entire idea that gays would make subpar parents due to potential depression (as he insinuated at the beginning of the debate). If Con doesn't think we should consider this fact, then Con cannot take anecdotal instances of depression or any negative factor and apply it to gay parenting as a whole." This is not only another blatant smoke-and-mirror tactic, but also a strawman because I can't recall using anecdotal evidence to show that gays suffered from depression at all. In fact, I conceded the depression argument later when it became too time-consuming to argue, but I still don't understand what this has to do with it. Next, she repeated pointless arguments that I conceded and had no bearing on the debate. "It seems to be that a parent's sexual endeavors have little to no impact on their ability to raise a child; instead what's important is the attention and care that child receives." This was not an argument I was going to make; indeed, sex lives (whether gay or straight) do not have any bearing the ability to raise children. But then she said: "Con dropped this, so the point goes to Pro." Of course I did. I never argued against it and it was not necessary to establish my case. And here's my response: "I can't understand why you think you've won anything here. My case has been about homosexual relationships (not necessarily who they have sex with) and the impact of not having a mother or a father. Irrelevant because I never even brought it up." She then repeated herself: "Whether a parent has sex with a man or woman doesn't affect their parental judgment. Con dropped this in R2, and in R3 responded that it's "irrelevant." Clearly it isn"t " it proves that one's sexuality doesn"t impact their ability to parent effectively." Now, this isn't irelevant if you're arguing whatever resolution she thought she was arguing, but not this one. We were talking about children being raised by a same-sex couple. Obviously what they do in bed is completely irrelevant to whether they have a stable, healthy relationship or whether children need both a mother and a father. She simply repeated herself and pretended that she had won something. More: "Con mentioned that "rough and tumble" play with their fathers provides children with a variable resource. In looking at the source from Con, there is absolutely nothing in there that explains why a child's biological father is necessary or even more valuable than having simply a male figure and role model around." "Simply the fact that fathers are more dedicated to their children much more than anybody else would be by their own natures as fathers." She said: "Con never mentioned this before, let alone proved it. We have no reason to accept it as a legitimate fact." She was essentially saying that any role model, whether an uncle, friend, teacher, babysitter, or just a guy down the street could replace a father. I pointed out how ridiculous that was because fathers have a paternal instinct and in general care for their children more than someone else would. This is extremely obvious and should require no studies or evidence to back it up any more than the existence of the moon does. Why did she demand one? It was an attempt to distract me and the voters and avoid giving a genuine response. Let's continue. "PRO: Environment in general plays a role in a child's upbringing; it's not limited specifically to the parents.Con must explain how a parent's sexuality, either homo or hetero, has a specific impact on a child's behavior. -->Con dropped this. The point goes to Pro." Me: "Again, you've avoided any real debate by strawmanning me. I have stated, very clearly, that it was an unhealthy relationship and the lack of a father or a mother that affected children. Sexual orientation in itself has nothing to do with it. Please stop this; I am on here to have a serious debate and your own resolution is being undermined by the fact that you cannot keep your arguments relevant." Her: "First, because Con didn't respond to several arguments when I typed my last round (notably 2, 5, 6 and 7), I assumed he wasn"t going to challenge them due to agreeing with me rather than exhibiting poor conduct by ignoring them. That's why I suggested he agreed - I wasn't straw manning." The evidence suggests otherwise. Then she has the chutzpah to continue on and say: "by saying "Sexual orientation in itself has nothing to do with it," Con basically has conceded the entire debate." I destroyed this semantic in the final round: "I'm getting sick of this. I was establishing that there was a difference between being gay and having a gay relationship or raising kids in a SS home. I was avoiding semantics, and I was wise to do it, because you literally said "Con must explain how a parent's sexuality, either homo or hetero, has a specific impact on a child's behavior." Still not enough: "I expect my opponent to make the argument that kids with gay parents might get teased more. There are two fundamental arguments against this premise. First, kids get teased for a plethora of reasons. Kids with parents who are fat, ugly, dumb or heck even "normal" for all intents and purposes get teased just because that's what kids do. However fat people or people with red hair (Gingers) aren't considered inherently inferior parents just because their kids might get made fun of due to qualities their parents have. Second, the reason that kids might get teased is because gay parents are still the minority. However, history shows us that through exposure, cultural norms and expectations shift. After awhile what is once obscure becomes familiar. That is why in bigger cities like New York and L.A., kids with gay parents are barely given a second thought, whereas that might not be the case in culturally stunted places like Arkansas." No, I never intended to make this argument and told her so. But why did she say: "Con dropped this, so he must agree."? I ignored this. Then, she went on to repeat herself in Round 4: "Just because the child may get teased has nothing to do with a homosexual's ability to parent. Con dropped this contention twice, therefore the point stands." My response: "Of course it stands. It's a complete strawman. I never brought it up; you did in the first round and pretended that it was essential to my case." Why did she bring it up in the first place? I find it hard to believe that this was an honest mistake. She pretended to have gained victory over some irrelevant point so that the less attentive readers would vote for her. She just repeated herself: "Con dropped this." "Con dropped this twice, therefore the point still stands" hoping that no one would notice that it was a complete strawman. Notice that I brought up an irrelevant point in the first round- that homosexuality was not natural or biologically caused- because I anticipated that she might argue that point. When she instead conceded it, I didn't repeat myself or pretend to have won some sort of victory. Speaking of which, let's take a look at that: "Con begins his round by trying to establish that sexual orientation is not hereditary and subject to a large number of variables. While I do think that biology plays a part in sexual orientation, I definitely agree that nature AND nurture play a role. The study Con presented (Exotic Becomes Erotic) explains the same thing, with the author noting that children's temperment is influenced by biological variables such as genetic factors that contribute to their childhood gender identity. Regardless, this is entirely irrelevant to the debate. What causes homosexuality is not up for question; whether or not gay people can be good parents is. As such, I don't need to respond to any of this unless Con explains why it's relevant." My response: "I was trying to establish that homosexuality was unhealthy and a product of emotional and social abnormalities. Again, I must quote: "This is primarily to make the point that homosexuality is not "natural" in the sense that it is unavoidable or part of human instinct."Your argument was literally "homosexuality is not a disorder" so I'm not really seeing anything pointless about it." Her response: "Homosexuality is found in 1500+ animal species [8]. They did not make the conscious choice to have a same-sex attraction given their extremely limited cognitive abilities." My response: "Here Pro tries to divert attention away from my actual argument. I never said anything about a conscious choice. She has brought it up for no reason other than that it is a common anti-gay sentiment. Again, classic strawman." In her final round she made the bizarre claim that I should lose the sources point because "[Con] cited the same source 3x in the last round." I explained: "I posted three links to my three graphs, which happened to be on the same page and could be confused with each other. I posted the along with the corresponding numbers for each graph (4, 5, 6) so that readers would know what I wanted to cite. What's really sad is why anyone would consider that grounds for a point loss. It seems YOU got confused, because you apparently didn't bother to scroll down and see the different studies." It honestly sounds desperate at this point. I can't imagine how that could affect anything even if she were right. "unnecessary comments like "I'm throughly disappointed in the quality of [Pro's] response" is rude and borderline ad hominem." I made a GENERAL STATEMENT about your response after I had addressed it. I said that I was disappointed in it because of the lawyering and absurd semantics, and I think it was quite justified. It's a bit hypocritical of you to post a condenscending rant after something like this and then try to say that you don't deserve a conduct loss, wouldn't you say? But this next one is lower still. After giving her my studies [http://www.debate.org...], she ignored them and pretended that they didn't exist. Not an exaggeration. Take a look. Me: "I urge my opponent to take note of the Sarantakos (1996)study. It compares 58 children of heterosexual married parents, 58 children of heterosexual cohabiting couples, and 58 children living with homosexual couples that were all "matched according to socially significant criteria (e.g., age, number of children, education, occupation, and socio-economic status)." The combined sample size 174, which is the seventh-largest sample size in the research findings above. What's interesting is that all of the larger studies were all adult self-report studies, which means that the Sarantakos is the largest study that investigated the development of children." Her "response": "Con didn't present any studies indicating harms attributed to gay parenting, which is good because I could have easily discounted those based on bias, faulty sampling and other mistakes. But all we've seen in this debate are studies affirming the resolution." That's it. Nothing else. She lied and pretended I hadn't given any sources because she couldn't refute it. The level of dishonesty and lawyering seen here is almost beyond comprehension. And now, we have to address another important point: Why did everybody vote for her? To be clear, I am not arguing that I should have won, but explaining why people seem to have almost unanimously voted in her favor when the cheating seems so obvious. My opponent's primary tactic here was the "Gish Gallop." Named after creationist Duane Gish, "it is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time." [http://rationalwiki.org...] The same thing happened here. Many of her strawmen were only one or two sentences long, and she used so many of them I could never address them all within 8,000 characters. Indeed, I quoted her to give her full context each time she used them and wasted immense amounts of space in doing so. Had she debated fairly I would not have had to quote anything at all but could have simply summarized her case. Up until very late in the game I did not realize what was happening. I did consider calling her out on it, but I considered it a risky strategy and kept arguing. Looking back I don't think it would have had much effect at all unless I explicitly pointed out every single abuse as I am doing here. Since there is no character limit in this debate, she cannot accuse me of doing the same (and if I'm lying about all this, I doubt she needs more than three days to debunk me). But back to the original question- why did people vote for her? Becuase my round were constructed poorly and were too long, obviously. I abbreviated everything I could before giving up and going past the limit, and the amount that I had to refute meant every bit of space was taken up with convoluted details which I did not have time to organize it properly. Meanwhile, Danielle often did not give me full context or ignored my arguments, and thus was able to keep her posts succint enough to be able to fit large, theatrical attacks in there: "On the other hand, it's really sad that Con dropped every single study and every single fact backing up my case for no apparent reason. As we can see, these studies are the meat and potatoes of the debate. My opponent cannot compete with the fact that science and psychology are on my side," or "Con hasn't denied that the vast consensus of ALL studies show that there is NO inherent harm in same-sex parenting. He hasn't denied that homosexuals can possess any quality a heterosexual can in terms of attributes that contribute to good parenting. He hasn't remotely contested the legitimacy of the studies, considering there are dozens that take into account hundreds of cases of kids with gay parents. Ergo, Con acknowledges that research indicates that kids of gay parents show no differences in achievement, mental health, social functioning and other measures. Meanwhile, the research also incidcates that there are BENEFITS to same-sex parenting." Now let's look at the RFDs. "My point (being that people saw what they expected to see and voted based on what jumped out at them) can be evidenced by the RFDs: "But from there, everything kind of gets jumbled and meaning gets lost between arguments and testosterone/rage levels, so instead of going through things point-by-point, I look for the flow of offense. Looking at the flow of offense (points being extended and defended successfully), Danielle has completely trounced MouthWash." -Zaradi Again: "Con's case lacked major offense and, as stated, retrogressed into mere references to his case as he attempted constantly to demonstrate that his opponent has strawmanned him (this prevented much insight from emerging in the periphery of the debate), and rested on unjustified premises--the power of the traditional family that, in being disrupted, would not only distend much of the positive relationships between parent ad offspring, the abnormalities of homosexuality that eventually lead the debate to veer into a turn about such, and so forth. All of this were, to be fair, not directly relevant, and thus lacked offense..Other avenues, such as attacking the notion that we could subscribe the values of heterosexual parenting to homosexual couples (perhaps), or undertaking other avenues to demonstrate that the father-mother constituency as role models" was concrete." Man-is-good. I'm not saying that these people are incompetent voters or insulting them based on their vote. I'm not even saying that they should have voted for me instead (had I been in their position even I might have voted for you because I probably wouldn't have had the patience to go through my convoluted rounds either). I'm just using them to establish that there was a reason why the debate seemed so one-sided. I send it off to my opponent.