A religious president like Huckabee is the worst thing for this country right now.

So you want to link "social acceptability" with morality. Again, we are going to disagree on how we define this concept. I believe in absolute morality. In the past, especially in regards to superstitious religious beliefs, people were able to perform immorally in a socially justified way, simply because it was accepted by their religion. Witch burning, crusades, religious persecution, etc. were all justified socially, but are still inherently immoral. Your approach to morality is wrong in my eyes, because it depends on what other people think morality ought to be; I believe that something that is unjust is absolutely wrong no matter what other people think about it. In fact, with your definition, there is really no point in us having this discussion at all because you would just lay down and accept the norm. I, on the other hand, see injustice in our government and seek to change it. The four laws I presented last round are good examples of this. 1) you have conceded that sodomy laws are unconstitutional, and that is good because so has our supreme court. These laws are not still in effect, but I point them out because they are INCREDIBLY unjust, and they have only very recently been dismantled. 2) gay marriage - yes, tax laws are a very good point. By civil unions/marriage not being defined as a man and a woman, it qould seem to open up the potential for abuse by people who seek to take advantage of the system. However, I don't see how the system is not already ripe for the taking as it is. A man and a woman can abuse the system in the same way that two men can. Furthermore, who do you define as "evading tax laws", and who do you define as not? How can you say that ANY two people who want to start a life/family and get a tax break to help them live the American dream is abusing the system? In strict Christian terms, people are in the wrong if they have premarital sex or marry a non-Christian, so obviously Christian concerns must be pushed to the side. This happens to be the case WHENEVER Christian values come into contradiction with law or science: THEY MUST BE DISCARDED, in the spirit of justice and morality. The Christian belief system is a great system to follow on a personal level, to achieve personal results, but you CANNOT FORCE IT ON THE POPULACE. This ALWAYS results in injustice. The fact is that religious politicians, like Huckabee, DISAGREE with me on these points. Huckabee says "I'm not trying to push my religion down anybody's throat..." that is complete nonsense. Huckabee is overwhelmingly likely to promote pro-Christian legislation that will negatively affect the civil rights of non-christians. I will provide an example in #3. 3) My point is that Christians are generally in favor of the war on drugs, and specifically, Huckabee has announced on youtube (type in "Huckabee marijuana" in the youtube search engine to see for yourself) that he will continue the raids on terminally ill cancer patients who smoke marijuana to ease their pain. Your arguments against marijuana are very weak. Potential to abuse marijuana? What in God's name do you mean by that? How can you "abuse" marijuana? I've smoked as much as anyone and I haven't found a way yet!! How can you tell me that laws that put marijuana users in jail are justified, based on this? You actually think that it is morally acceptable for the man in my example to go to jail? Maybe you will retract your argument, and say that you simply said it is the acceptably legal thing to do. It IS legal, and that is my whole point in this debate! It is legal, yet unjust! And Huckabee will absolutely continue this grave injustice, because Christian/Republican family values dictate that smoking weed is immoral and should remain illegal. This demonstrates my thesis with great momentum. You think that a man smoking weed in his house, who lets the smell get out, is equivalent to firing off a gun? I see that your definition of morality, based on social acceptance, is twisting your grip on the very essence of the word. I STRONGLY suggest that, in the future, you forget what "everybody else is doing", and concentrate on the pure meaning of morality. I can tell that you are smarter than this, and I hope you will take my advice. Again, I expect you to say "I only meant that it was illegal, which it IS". By saying this, you are providing evidence for my thesis, which is that "A religious president like Huckabee is the worst thing for this country right now." You equate smoking weed to firing off a gun, which is obviously not a good moral comparison, but only a legal comparison. The fact that you can make this legal comparison means something is wrong, and a president like Huckabee will only exacerbate the situation. 4) Hussein was a terrible dictator? Why? He HATED terrorists, and he would KILL them on sight! Now we have created a breeding ground for terrorism. What crimes did he perpetrate? Your definition of morality dictates that if it is socially acceptable, than it is OK! I'm sure Hussein was doing just fine then, if you factor in the laws and customs of his own country. Of course, my definition of morality would judge him differently, but that is not relevent here. Yes, we agree that the reasons leading in to Iraq were BS, but I recognize that the reasons for staying are the same BS. That civil war is going to be fought and for some reason we are not letting it happen. It sounds good to actually pretend like we care about the region erupting in war, but that is only a cover. We are over there right now because we believe they have archaic religous beliefs and we need to police them! It's not much different than the guy smoking weed in his house, and the officer bursting in and hauling him off to jail. In both cases, we have judged them to be morally wrong, from a Christian perspective, and have acted as if this perspective is absolute. We then take action, even though our constitution does not grant us the authority to do so, and create injustice in the process. Again, I believe Huckabee, being a powerful religious politician, will further exacerbate these situations. I will forget you mentioned that a Christian president will be less likely to be involved in a scandal. You are starting to slip up, at the end of your argument. Allow me to introduce you to a man called Ronald Reagan. Once upon a time, we had a very powerful environmental movement. It started gaining a lot of speed in the 1970's, until Reagan took power in 1980. Reagan took the progress we made in the seventies, and dismantled it piece by piece. In my Conservation of Natural Resources Class, Reagan was required reading because of the environmental policies that he destroyed. I will look for my textbook from the class and leave some more specific examples in the comments section below, as you probably are not aware of his legacy. At any rate, he was considered the worst president ever from an environmental perspective, and was once quoted as saying that "trees cause pollution". To conclude my argument, Mike Huckabee is a powerful religious politician. I recognize that he *just might* use his religion as a tool to mold his policy-maiking decisions, and I think that our society has sustained enough damage to civil rights by people who act in the best interests of Christianity, and not the best interests of society as a whole. In particular, I believe that people who are struggling with drug addictions, homosexuals, and pregnant women have seen their civil liberties jeopardized by religious politicians. My opponents argument asserts that, since most people in the US are Christian, then how can we be alarmed that there is so many laws in our books based on Christianity? I think that this is a good observation, that explains why things are the way they are, but it doesn't do anything to say why we shouldn't be holding our standards a little higher.