Polygamous Marriages

I'm...rather confused by my opponent's last round. It seems to be that he, more or less, drops most of everything that was said in the previous round to make two claims and to say that I'm discriminating against polygamous couples? I'm not entirely sure what he's getting at, but I'll go through his responses and then go through what all was not addressed.I'll start with this idea that marriage is defined as between two people, and that changing it to allow more than two people would be changing our conception of marriage (the first paragraph). This argument seems to put the conclusion before the claim when it's saying that remodeling our conception of marriage is bad. Sure, I'll give you that if we legalize polygamy then we'd have to make amends to our definition of marriage for legal purposes, but why can't we do this? There doesn't really seem to be an answer to this question anywhere in my opponent's last round. Moreover, I would argue that such a change ought to happen. Since I'm showing that there's no reason why we ought to deny polygamous families the right to marriage, then the next logical step would be that we ought to change the law to allow for this to happen. That just happens to be the very point of this debate....huh. Neat.He also makes a response to one of my defenses of polygamy by saying that if we can just discuss problems within the relationship among ourselves, then what's the point of legally getting married? The answer to this one is simple: because in the status quo today, polygamy is still technically illegal and you can face legal reprocussions if accused of this. Even though we can find polygamy pretty publically displayed through TV, even the reality TV show "Sister Wives" is potentially facing legal reprocussions since polygamy is still technically against the law[1]. The point of legalizing polygamy would be to prevent these things from happening. Moreover, I think you misunderstand the point of marriage. You seem to be arguing for marriage just being this legally binding contract saying that x husband can do a, b, and c things with y wife, and that if problems arise we pull out our handy-dandy marriage contract and see what it says we should do about things. That's not really how marriage works: 1. This conception of marriage seems to forget that these kinds of problems can occur outside the bonds of marriage. How they're dealt with are pretty simple: the couple gets together and discusses the problem, and what ought to be done about the problem. In this case, it seems like this "contract" version of marriage seems pretty useless. 2. This "contract" version of marriage seems to ignore how contracts are actually formed: two parties coming together and discussing the terms of the contract and agreeing to abide by what was discussed. A contract isn't necessary for two parties to come together and discuss things. The only problem lies in enforcing the agreements if such a contract doesn't exist. My opponent seems to be misunderstanding my point. The problems he discusses aren't unique to polygamous families -- traditional couples have these problems in relationships as well. How they solve for it is primarily discussing between the two of them what would happen in these situations. The only problem with this relies in when they can't agree. Fortunately for traditional couples, legal alternatives exist that allow for the fair enforcement of affairs in the relationship (this is things like marriage counciling, divorce court, etc.). These legal alternatives don't exist for polygamous couples because in the status quo polygamy is illegal. Legalizing polygamy would open up these alternative solutions to the problems that the polygamous family couldn't work out among themselves, so that instead of these problems going unresolved because they can't decide between themselves how to solve these problems, that the problems get solved so that everyone can be happy and no innocent parties (i.e. kids) get hurt in the cross-fire.Why should these legal alternatives be available? Because on a more basic level of human understanding, there's not a whole lot of distinction between traditional couples from polygamous couples other than plus one person. And, as I argue, if that is the only distinction between them, then there are no relevent distinctions between the two that ought to affect eligibility for marriage. Hence, why I'm advocating for polygamous marriage being legalized in this debate...I'm not really going to respond to the whole "I'm discriminating against polygamous couples" bit because I'm really confused as to how I'm discriminating against them by saying that they're the same as monogomous couples other than the additional people...so instead I'll go on to addressing things that my opponent never did. To begin with, my opponent never responds to my argument that marriage isn't this practical-based ideal, but rather love is the basis of marriage, and this love is the sole requirement to what qualifies one for marriage. As we've seen from recent movements of the gay marriage debate, this is the current societal belief, and as such, it falls on my opponent to argue why this belief is incorrect. Otherwise, this socially-accepted belief ought to be the default belief. If this is the standard by which we judge who is worthy of being able to marry or not, then there seems to be no reason to deny polygamous couples the ability to marry.And I've sufficiently defended my responses to his arguements, meaning that I'm winning under both conceptions of marriage. This means that regardless of who's understanding of marriage you agree with more, there ought not be a reason to deny polygamous couples the right to marry.Back to my opponent.Sources:[1] - See Round 1