Gay Marriage Ought to be Legalized

Thank you for your response. My opponent seems to misunderstand the reasons that marriage is a recognized as a union between man and woman. Obviously the government recognizes marriage for a reason. This is because marriage can benefit society. The government dispenses marital benefits to urge couples to get married in order to continue to benefit society. Only a society that produces children and raises them properly survives. This is a given fact. The government recognizes marriage between man and woman because they provide both of these things to the society. In return, the government gives them benefits not only as a “thank you” for what the couple is doing but to also urge other heterosexual couples to get married. To promote any marital relationship that does not have a special link to children is not in the government’s best interest because it blurs the reason why the government recognizes marriage in the first place. For example, “According to a Feb. 29, 2004 report by Stanley Kurtz, PhD, from 1990 to 2000, Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate rose from 39% to 50% and Sweden's rose from 47% to 55%. Unmarried parenthood in Denmark rose 25% during the 1990s, and approximately 60% of first born Danish children have unmarried parents.”(1) This is not in the government’s interest because they want to promote a good family unit, not one as broken as my example. It is simply not in the interest of the society. If my opponent has any contentions with what I have stated I will respond accordingly. For now I believe this will do. We can now see that religion plays absolutely no role in marriage and that the government simply has a preference to define marriage in a way that best benefits society. Now that I have explained this we can see that my opponent’s entire point on homosexuality throughout history is quite irrelevant to this debate. Now my opponent mentions the legality of gay marriage. Whether or not gay marriage can be legal has no relevance to whether gay marriage should be legal. In addition, the question is really whether the Supreme Court was talking about gay marriage at all. "Any legal system that distinguishes marriage from other, non-marital forms of association, romantic or not, will justly exclude some kinds of union from recognition. So before we can conclude that some marriage policy violates the Equal Protection Clause, or any other moral or constitutional principle, we have to determine what marriage actually is and why it should be recognized legally in the first place." You see, in order to say marriage is a right we must first look at why the government recognizes marriage in the first place. For homosexuals to have a right to marriage, the government must first define what marriage is and why they recognize it. You will find through my arguments that marriage is a right to heterosexuals because the government recognizes marriage for the relationship heterosexuals pursue. My opponent assumes I will be debating the slippery slope arguments that gay marriage will lead to the legalization of other types of relationships such as bestiality and pedophilia. I will not be going down that route for my arguments so there will be no need to respond. My opponent talks about how marriage isn’t strictly about procreation. I some-what agree. You see the government recognizes heterosexual unions for the relationships they pursue, not necessarily the outcome. Heterosexual relationships have a natural tendency to bring children into the world to be raised by a father and a mother. However, this is not absolutely crucial. If the government strictly recognized marriage for children then they would have to justly abolish every relationship that does not produce a child. Why the government recognizes the marriage of infertile couples: “They are still of a procreative type even if not all members of that kind can act on its characteristic effects. Their union is still ordered toward procreation as an end in the same way that a blind eye remains an eye in virtue of the kind of thing it is. The state still takes an interest in infertile/childless marriages because it wants to promote a view of marriage as it really is, not just as a means to an end.” Can’t Homosexuals Benefit Society Too? A common argument is that homosexuals can benefit society through adoption or artificial insemination. The government is only interested in a relationship that has a natural tendency to produce children through the relationship the couple pursue. A homosexuals couple does not have this kind of link to children so the government still has no interest in recognizing a homosexual union. In addition, although there is much controversy over it, studies have shown that homosexuals are naturally more prone to violence, drug abuse, and suicide. (2) The kind of environment they put children is not deemed as suitable. In response to studies that show no difference between heterosexual parenting and homosexuals parenting: studies that have a large amount of participants that were selected randomly tended to conclude that heterosexual parenting was better, whereas studies that showed there was no difference tended to have a small amount of non-random participants. (3) Conclusion I have shown why many of my opponent’s arguments are irrelevant or illegitimate and I have provided adequate responses to everything. “Hitchslapped!” I think not. ^^ I look forward to my opponent’s response. Sources (1) http://gaymarriage.procon.org... (2)http://catholiceducation.org... (3) http://www.adfmedia.org...