Homosexual Marriage Should Be Legalized Everywhere

Religion DOES exist outside of marriage. Your own sources, as well as my own, have confirmed that:"Marriage (also called matrimony or wedlock) is a socially or ritually recognized union or legal contract between spousesthat establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws." "People marry for many reasons, including: legal, social, libidinal, emotional, financial, spiritual, and religious."http://en.wikipedia.org......"The act of marrying, or the state of being married; legal union..."http://www.webster-dictionary.org......"... according to the laws or customs of the place."http://www.webster-dictionary.org......It's clear that marriage is ABSOLUTELY NOT an exclusively religious occurrence....You used this source in order to suggest that marriage is exclusively religious, if the entirety of your text is examined - yet, instead, you have used to strongly suggest that it is not, which I have shown already in this argument.I think you may have misunderstood why I included a dictionary definition of the word: "marriage". It was to show that dictionary definitions are unreliable, and to prove the statement your wikipedia article makes:"The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures..."And that includes different cultures within the same nation.I was trying to show that different English speaking people define marriage very differently. Some dictionaries, and some people, define marriage as between a man and a woman, and others as also between a man and a man. What I was not trying to do at the point when I listed that reference was to show that marriage is exclusively religious, or even exclusively between men and women. That is the bulk of my argument, yes, but I was not directly trying to show it through dictionary sourcces.Even if every dictionary in print said that marriage can exist outside of a spiritual context (and they don't, as my etymology dictionary source defines marriage in a non-theological sense as strictly figurative) it wouldn't mean anything because the actual meaning of a word depends on what the word orginally meant, and I think I have sufficiently shown that the word orginally meant nothing less than holy matrimony, in a strictly theological sense, through my reasoning that the scholarly, powerful catholic church at the time would have undoubtedly shaped the definition of the word, as my etymology source confirms. Again, the accepted definition of marriage was a spiritual union between a man and a woman, until a particular special interest group (gay rights advocates) attempted to change the definition. And again, even if a special rights group hadn't tried to change the definition of an accepted English word, it would still mean what it meant when it was formed. "Awesome" still means something inspiring awe, even though the majority of English speakers abuse the word.And another point: With the dawn of the word "civil union", more and more people are recognising that marriage, by definition, applies only to religious ceremonies. I suspect the trend is the opposite of what you imply.It was the epitome of all of your argumentation. You have been attempting to convince me and the readers that marriage is not something that state laws can illegalize - it's religious, so they receive no say, which is why my argument is supposedly redundant. I have shown this false, as the majority of U.S. states specifically abolish same-sex marriage. I have been attempting to argue that homosexual marriage is impossible to leagalize in some respects because homosexual marriage is a an impossible contradiction. Governments may pass laws that legalize gay marriage in every respect, but such laws would essentially be lies, since they would only be legalizing homosexual civil unions. They can also outlaw actual homosexual marriage, but such a law is redundant because homosexual marriage is impossible anyway. If by "legalize homosexual marriage" you meant to get rid of all laws abolishing it, you'd need to explain why doing away with a redundant law would benefit anybody--something you have not done in this debate.Additionally, note that as the one making the positive statement, you are the one with the BoP, and the only reasons you have put forward for why Homosexual marriage should be legaized everywhere topple if I have sufficiently shown that my account of the definition of marriage is accurate. The voters will have to decide whether I have, since that is the point this whole debate rests on.Lastly, I'd like to thank you for a great first debate. I enjoyed it very much, wish you luck in this and future debates, and look forward to debating you and other members of DDO in the future.Strategyzrox (con)