Marriage should be legal in the United States.

I appreciate your time and your thoughtful responses. It would appear as if we are actually making some headway. ::Case Pro- Rebuttals:: Contention 1: Delegalizing marriage has many positive effects such as: "1. Government can no longer discriminate who can and can't get married." Abolishing all legal forms of marriage to end certain forms of discrimination is completely nonsensical. It would be like cutting off your entire leg to get rid of a pain in your foot. "2. People have more liberty to do what they want with certain rights." I don't seem to understand what you are saying. If people can't get married then they would have less liberty, not more. "3. All people would have equal rights, with no discriminatory benefits for those who people are willing to marry." Giving all people equal treatment, regardless of circumstances, is itself a form of discrimination. Some people deserve more than others by virtue of their status/achievements in a society. Like I have said earlier, married couples deserve more rights than single people because they have many responsibilities that do not pertain to being single. Furthermore, even though some married people choose not to have children there are other responsibilities which only pertain to two people in a relationship that do not apply to single people. Among these responsibilities include decisions that need to be made about end of life issues. If you are single then you are not legally responsible for the end of life issues of anyone apart from yourself. This is why it's ridiculous to argue that legally sanctioned marriages violate the fourteenth amendment to the constitution. ::Case Pro- Counter Rebuttals:: Contention 1: Discrimination between married and single people is justified. Unfortunately, Mongeese has created a rather lengthy and irrelevant argument in this section. The fact that some people have a hard time getting married is utterly unrelated to this debate. People do not have a constitutional right to be guaranteed a marriage partner. Moreover, if people want to get married just to receive certain benefits then that's their prerogative. It is not the government's responsibility to investigate whether or not married people actually love each other. Contention 2: Legally sanctioned marriages are good for couples. "The rights mentioned by my opponent should not be reserved to those who claim to be married, but to everybody." The rights accorded to marriage are open to everyone else, and thus, your argument is irrelevant. Certain rights just have to be sought out individually. Furthermore, your proposed method for people getting married, and presumably divorced, would very likely lead to societal dysfunction. If getting married were "as easy as pie" then marriage would significantly lose its value in our modern industrialized society. It is a basic fact of human psychology that people are more likely to back out of things if there is no social pressure guiding their decisions. Therefore, government sanctioned marriages are likely to be cohesive since they are intertwined with legal social contracts in a way that Internet "marriages" are not. In conclusion, these quick and easy marriages would inevitably undermine various social contracts and degrade our sense of moral commitment. [1] Consider the following thought experiment. Imagine that a friend has invited you to a party where it doesn't really matter whether or not you show up. And then imagine that the president has invited you to speak at a white house dinner where you are the guest of honor. Which of these two events would you be more likely to back out of? Obviously, you would be less likely to stand up the president because by doing so you would endure many negative social repercussions. So to is the case with legally sanctioned marriages. If people could just get "married" by going to some website then divorce would almost certainly increase. This would then foster societal dysfunction. [2] Marriages are done in churches and often at courthouses because this increases the likelihood that those marriages will not dissolve in a quick divorce. This also forces people to think at least twice about their decisions regarding marriage. Your argument in favor of legally unrecognized quick and easy marriages through the Internet is not only poor; it is very likely to lead to impulsive marriage decisions that would surely be detrimental to society. Contention 3: Marriage is good for society and should be promoted by the government. Mongeese, you seem to have misunderstood my argument. I do not argue that legal marriages are more stable than non-legal marriages. I simply point out that marriage, whether legally recognized or not, is in general good for society. And in order to encourage marriage the government would be wise to legally recognize it and subsidize it with benefits. Secondly, marriages are stabilizing aspects of society even if children are not involved. Contention 4: Laws or legal arrangements that produce maximal utility should be preferred in a society. "The positive benefits my opponent mentions would produce more utility if they were available to everybody regardless of marriage." This has already been dealt with in one of my earlier segments. Hopefully, we can reach some kind of a consensus by the end of this debate. And I look forward to your final round. ::References:: 1. http://www.iep.utm.edu... 2. http://www.divorcereform.org...