That society ought to recognize animal rights

Let me start the debate by saying that my opponent has misinterpreted many of my arguments. Whether the strawmanning was intentional or not remains to be seen, but from looking at my opponent I doubt it was. Therefore, allow me to clarify.My argument is that morality must be somthing that obligates us to follow it. Otherwise, we would have no reason to follow it, and thus would only beg the question of why be moral. This means that contractarianism is the only plausible form of morality that can give us an obligation to do any action. Because animals and humans cannot and will not form a contract between the two of them, we can hold no obligation to give them those rights. We can do it and it would be a permissible action, that fact I never denied, but actually conceded in my case. But as the resolution is asking for an obligation, my opponent has to prove some sort of obligation to give them those rights, and that can only come from some sort of contractual agreement. My opponent's first argument is that not everyone owes a duty to society. But remember, as I stated in my case, that contracts must be mutually beneficial. Take, for example, the examples my opponent uses, which are the infants and the mentally disabled. They hold no duty to the state, but rather the state holds a duty to them in the form of health care and treatment among other things. We, as normal citizens, hold a duty to the government in the form of taxes and what not. They hold a duty to us to give us protection and certain rights. Contracts do not, and are not, merely one way.My opponent's second argument is that we don't need to recognize rights in order for the rights to exist, and thus rights cannot exist contractually. My opponent is correct. Contracts do not create rights. However, contracs, and the government as my argument is, recognize rights and allow others to utilize those rights. We cannot recognize our own rights. I can't say that I suddenly have an inherent human right to reproduce and start raping chicks and getting them pregnant, nor can I say that I have an inherent human right to wealth and start stealing money from people to fuel my right. Rights must be recognized by an outside agent, in this case that outside agent is the government. And as the resolution is asking whether we hold a moral obligation to recognize animal rights, and not on whether those rights exist in the first place, this argument falls as well.My opponent's third argument is that we are debating about a moral obligation, and not a legal one. This is true. It's good, then, that I'm supporting the ethical system of contractarianism, which does create this moral obligation. I'm merely using the government as an example to prove the validity of the theory and to clarify upon it's principles. But then secondly, my opponent has also done nothing to prove that a moral obligation exists outside of contractarianism other than we have a responsibility to do so, however that does not prove obligation, but rather permissibility. So even if you buy all of his responses, you still default to my case since I'm the only one providing some framework that establishes obligation.Also, my opponent makes a few fatal drops from my case:1. He drops my arguments as for why humans and animals cannot form a contract with one another, but rather attacks the concept of contractarianism as a whole instead. Because of that, if I'm even winning a sliver of a chance of contractarianism being true, you default to the negative position.2. He drops the a priori argument that I made that if contractarianism is false, then there are no other ethical theories that actually provide an obligation. If morality doesn't obligate us to follow it, then it would only beg the question of why be moral, and then skepticism would follow, which means that it's impossible to hold an obligation in the first place. This means that even if you buy that contractarianism is false, and because he has not provided an alternative framework to work with, the resolution is still negated. With that, my case still easily stands. This means you negate the resolution as I'm a) the only one providing a theory for why things are actually good or why morality actually obligates us, whereas my opponents case just makes assumptions that we hold those obligations and that those obligations exist in the first place. and b) even if you're not buying contractarianism, you still look to the dropped a priori argument that says if contracts aren't true then moral skepticism follows and then there can't be any moral obligations and the resolution is automatically false. This actually puts my opponent into a double bind because either a) he has to concede that contracts are true, and then you look to the two dropped reasons why humans and animals cannot make a contract together to negate or b) contracts aren't true and you look to the a priori. Either way, you negate off of my case. But now let's address his case.My opponent claims that in order to disprove that responsibility establishes obligation that I needed to respond to why we 'ought' be responsible and I dropped that, but that's not true at all. I did respond to that by saying that all it does is blurs the lines of permissiblity and obligation. But moreover, in that section all he does is he says that the affirmative establishes a better world and then says "Don't you want to live in a better world? If so, then you're obligated to do something!" in a massively fallacious emotional appeal without any actual warrant as to why these obligations to be responsible exist. His "why we 'ought' to do it" section doesn't actually establish the moral obligations, but rather presumes that they exist. My opponent's only other argument is that of a semantical one that responsibility and obligation can be used interchangibly, but that doesn't actually prove they are the same as my opponent conceded.My opponent also said that I don't have a case, but as I clarified in the comments, the contractarianism argument was my case, and I believe I made it fairly obvious that there was a difference in where I was responding to my opponent's case and where I was reading my own, specifically when I said "As such, there's no reason to affirm the resolution, as we possess no obligation to extend to animals these rights. With that's let's look at my opponent's case."So because of this, the debate still breaks down simply:1) I'm winning sufficient offense off of contractarianism to prove that it's true. And even if I'm not, my opponent has not provided an alternative theory to evaluate the round under, and thus this leaves the only option to be contractarianism. This means you look to the negative case.2) If I'm proving contractarianism true (or if you're defaulting to it because there's no other way to evaluate the round), then you look to the dropped contentional arguments as to why we do not possess an obligation to recognize animal rights if contractarianism is true (which is the inability to use language and the mutual benefit argument). This means that under my case, you negate.3) If you don't buy contractarianism, you look to the dropped a priori argument that says if contractarianism is false, then moral skepticism follows and then the resolution is automatically negated.4) My opponent is not proving that obligations exist outside of contractarianism, much less that we have one to animals. Therefore, the affirmative case doesn't actually affirm the resolution.Don't let him respond to the dropped arguments in the last round, as new arguments in the last round and inherently unfair to me.The resolution is negated. I look forward to reading my opponent's final round.