Polygamists should be granted the right to a civil union with rights similar to marriage

I didn't realize this until just now, but my opponent is using a very narrow definition of the word polygamy. He is specifically using it to mean a man with several wives. Here is what the definition of polygamy is. Polygamy- marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time. http://i.word.com... You can look at just about any dictionary and it will give you the same definition. He's actually confusing it for the word polygyny. http://i.word.com... I might touch on some stuff my opponent said this round, but I will mainly focus on rebuttals as opposed to counter rebuttals. This is in the interest of fairness. Premise 1: There is no natural right to have a polygamous civil union. My opponent's premise one doesn't really match the premises he provided, so I'll just take this point by point. "In fact, both the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women have condemned polygamy because of their conviction that it discriminates against women." My opponent doesn't say how allowing polygamists to be granted the same rights as monogamous couples discriminates against women. He just merely asserts that the UN human rights group says this is so. He really needs to elaborate on this before I can offer a rebuttal. I'd say that controlling the dynamics of a relationship a woman chooses to engage in is discriminatory. Women should be free to be in a polygamous relationship if they choose to be. As I've already explained Freedom is the highest good. My opponent has agreed with my P1, P2 and C1 so this should be treated as fact. "In actuality, polygamy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S Constitution" This is just foolish. The equal protection clause in layman's terms basically says all people should have equal rights and protections under the law. Giving polygamous couples less protection and rights than monogamous couples is a clear violation of the equal rights clause. It's a violation of the constitution to give more rights to Monogamous couples than polygamous couples. My opponent is advocating for polygamists to have less rights and is therefore advocating for violating the 14th amendment of the constitution. "A husband is able to take as many wives as he wishes while the wife is limited to one husband." Nonsense, just because men would be allowed to marry several women with polygamy legalized, doesn't mean that women shouldn't or wouldn't be granted the same rights. If polygamy was legalized in the United States, you can bet it wouldn't be gender specific "In order to do, the government would have to overturn the Morril Anti-Bigamy Act and the Edmunds Acts as well as countless court cases." So what. It had to overturn laws when they outlawed slavery. The government needs to do the right thing even if it means overturning a few unjust laws. In fact I say overturning laws that hurt our freedom is a good thing not a negative. "A polygamous civil union would violate the Equal Protection Claus of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, as established in P1." Nope, giving polygamous people the same rights as people in monogamous actually helps to uphold the equal protections clause. The rest of my opponent's arguments cite his source labeled #7. The relevant part of the document (for this debate), is completely uncited. It just lists a bunch of harms caused by polygamy. I can't even argue against them. It shows that polygamy increases poverty and crime, but doesn't cite the studies or where it got this information. Without citation it's just some expert (in god knows what) making bare assertions. You can find experts on every side of an issue, so quoting some facts the spout out isn't good enough. Here is the biggest problem with most polygamous studies. They focus on the effects of polygamy on a polygamous society. If in America we give polygamists equal rights (instead of persecuting them), we won't all of a sudden become a polygamous society. The effects of polygamy in a predominately monogamous society is unlikely to cause crime rates to increase and cause old men to start dating young women. Polygamy is something that would be extremely rare in urban environments due to the high cost of such a family unit. They do well in farm communities and we're clearly not all going to become polygamists should we give them equal rights. http://m.psychologytoday.com... In fact, like my last source stated. Polygamy can actually be quite good for women involved in areas with more women than men. I won't go into counter rebuttals here, though I want to. I'll do this in fairness to my opponent. I'll just say that he agreed for the purposes of this debate with my first and second premise as well as the first conclusion. The only thing up for debate in my argument is premise three and conclusion number two.