There Are Good Secular Reasons to Disallow Same-Sex Marriage

I would like to begin by thanking Contradiction for his participation in this debate. This is an important issue, and parsing through such things is vital to the health of our civilization. I too would like you to encourage you to read the entire debate if you haven't already, or even re-read it, so you can be certain that what I am about to claim is accurate. Allow me to argue why I believe you should vote Con. Ignored Arguments Pro did not address a plethora of arguments throughout the debate. He has ignored my arguments that: 1. Saying OSM serves a purpose for the State and is therefore the objective nature of marriage is question-begging. 2. My definition serves a greater public good than his definition; it does not fall short of either the private or public purpose. 3. Any justice that sacrifices the well being of humans for that of institutions is no justice at all. 4. There are other court opinions that say the public purpose of marriage extends beyond children. 5. Gender identity and whether genders complement each other is not determined by physical sex. 6. Children being raised by gay couples deserve to have their upbringing strengthened. 7. That his argument is circularly based on heterosexual sex. 8. Neither homosexuals nor heterosexuals require a right to marriage in order for the government to regulate it. 9. Single parents are incentivized to adopt and a single parent by themselves is not ordered towards procreation. 10. One does not have to know what something is in order to understand its effects. I could go on, there are multiple arguments I did not list that went unaddressed, but I'd argue once a position has failed to address points ranging in double-digits that position cannot be considered to have a convincing argument. Strawman Arguments: My opponent has (I'll assume unintentionally) misconstrued many of my arguments. Here are a few examples (there are more): 1. I argued that banning SSM does much harm while allowing it promotes much good. Pro responded by asserting I was discussing the "harm principle": that the actions of individuals should only be limited to prevent harm to other individuals. He tried to make it seem as though I was arguing SSM is socially neutral, when in reality I've argued constantly that SSM promotes the public good and banning it diminishes the public good. I've even pointed out that this is a strawman in R3, and instead of a rebuttal in R5 he again calls and responds to it as though it was the harm principle 2. Pro claimed in R5 that my argument was that he only asserted the conjugal position as true. Of course he gave reasons, but I argued those reasons do not advance his case. I pointed out that having a consistent and even beneficial definition does not make it the objective nature. 3. Pro states that the presences of disagreement doesn't imply that there's no right answer to what's being disagreed about, in response to my argument that marriage has been historically different. I agree, but it doesn't address my argument. I challenged Pro to come up with a methodology for determining the intrinsic nature of marriage. All he has offered is reasons to think we should want his definition to be the objective nature of marriage. It serving a public and private purpose, and that the government could implement it (all things that my definition have) imply that is what marriage is. 4. I argued the nature of an interpersonal relationship is determined by the individuals themselves and not their biology. Contradiction falsely equivocated familial relationships (what makes someone a biological mother or father) with the nature of an interpersonal relationship (what makes someone a parental figure). I pointed that this was a strawman, and received no reply. The Argument Itself Let's condense Pro's argument to better illustrate the fallacies and leaps in logic necessary for him to make his case. He starts by defining marriage as an institution with a special link to children. He then says that marriage must serve a public good. After that, he points out that only a heterosexual couple have parts that can work together towards a specific end, that being procreation. This makes them of a certain kind, and therefore only couples of that kind are intrinsically geared toward child-raising. Therefore marriage should only be between a man or a woman. Even if we assume that heterosexuals can "unite comprehensively", as he puts it, that only shows that they are geared towards procreation. This alleged fact is the basis for his assertion that only unions oriented toward procreation are oriented toward child rearing. This doesn't follow. How genitals work has nothing to do with how children are raised. I've brought this point up nearly every round, and Pro's only response has been to reassert that genital orientation determines the nature of the entire relationship, despite numerous other (unaddressed) arguments to the contrary. Per kind membership, Pro says: "Benefits do matter, but what matters more is whether they are suited for social structures in which they are said to inhere." If it were the case that homosexual couples are not suited for a particular social structure, then they would be at a disadvantage in raising children. Not that we wouldn't expect to see any good homosexual parental units, but that overall there would be detrimental effects. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) firmly refutes this, and states emphatically that not only are homosexual couples equally equipped to raise children compared to heterosexual couples, but their family unit would be strengthened through marriage. Just because something may appear physically weak, does not mean we get to call it weak if it is able to lift up a building. Pro's citation that other studies not used by the AAP might not be accurate does nothing to dissuade the evidence from my side. Despite my opponents statement that marriage is an institution with a special link to children, when he argued that Gallagher demonstrated children may be harmed by same-sex parents, and I responded with the AAP quote I described above, Pro found this confusing. Yet he says this in the very first round: "The state regulates marriage because it has an interest in children. Marriage produces and cultivates the development of future citizens within a family unit held together by norms of fidelity, monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence. The flourishing of children is directly connected with the public good. The state incentivizes marriage both because it recognizes child-rearing to be a difficult task and because it wants to encourage men and women to form family units." Regardless of whether the State allows SSM, gay couples form families and raise children every day. Same-sex couples deserve the same personal benefits as straight couples and the children deserve to have a strong family unit, which AAP demonstrated. Finally, citing one philosopher is not good practice for determining a definition, and Pro confuses my demonstrations of the falsity of his claims as begging the question. You don't get to dismiss evidence because the evidence disconfirms your claims. You may agree with my opponent that SSM should be banned. You may even think there are secular reasons to do so. Perhaps even you think you have great responses to the points that Contradiction skipped over or built a strawman of. That's irrelevant to the question here. You should not deem an argument which cannot address so many different problems and which relies on so many strawmen as persuasive. If you are the kind of person who votes on spelling and grammar, I encourage you to count the number of mistakes each of us made. Just by using spell check (not counting words not in the dictionary) Pro had twenty different grammar and spelling errors whereas I had only five. I don't really believe spelling should matter much, but in case anyone felt like awarding those points to Pro, I'd like to point that out. The resolution stands refuted.