Resolved: The Boy Scouts of America should end its policy banning gay membership.

Sources: Just a disclaimer about the sources, I accidentally forgot to put them on my previous round. I will, however, provide them before the end of this debate in either the comment section or at the end of this particular round.Discrimination: The entirety of the argument in the first paragraph rests on the implication that I would agree that discriminating on the girls joining the organization would be morally permissible. If I did so, then he would have an argument and hence, a contradiction in the reasoning I'm establishing. This is not the case. I don't believe that discrimination is immoral in every single scenario. It is morally permissible when when the basis of the discrimination is on individual merit rather than generalization or belonging to a particular group of people. This would be justified discrimination (in case if I hadn't mentioned that earlier in my case). My opponent would be right in stating that because the organization discriminates on girls (just as the opposite organization discriminates against boys), both scouting organizations would be immoral not just for the discrimination, but for the pressing of gender roles on the members therein. This is an irrelevant point however. We're not examining the discrimination against the other genders in this case; what we're looking at is a boys-only organization who treats one group of boys differently from another group of boys simply based on sexual orientation. Considering that this organization is kicking out members only based on their sexual orientation rather than their individual merit, this organization is committing unjustified discrimination. First Amendment/Peaceful Assembly: The counterargument my opponent makes here rests on two things: (1) A club or organization requires discrimination in order to emphasize values. (2) Disarray will follow when people with opposing values fit into one group. Both of these premises have counterexamples that completely destroy the entirety of the basis of my opponent's argument. Discrimination comes along only when a person is treated differently from another based on something, and this "something" is what determines the justification or lack thereof of the discrimination. My opponent implies the generalization that every organization with a certain value requires this different treatment in order to capitalize their values, meaning if I can find even 1 example of where this is not the case, this means at some level, discrimination does not need to be held. This is going to seem like a pretty distant comparison in order to provide one example, but Rick Santorum's previous campaign before dropping out of the race is the perfect example. Rick Santorum's campaign spearheaded idealisms against gay marriage and seemingly even gay relationships all the while there were gay people working under Rick Santorum's campaign with Santorum's orders not to have them being treated differently or discriminated on basis of their sexual orientation. Although his campaign wasn't successful (in no part because gays had been part of his campaign), his values had been spearheaded effectively regardless the existence of gays in the organization. This same idea applies to his second poin which is all based on the premise that organizations with people with differing values cannot compromise and disarray will follow although many an example in history proves that to be completely wrong. During the Clinton administration where the president was a Democrat and there was a majority of Republicans in the House led by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), there was many a time where bills were passed based on compromise, including DADT and several economics bills to stabilize the economy during the 1990s. During the Kennedy administration, despite the obvious differences between the functionings in the Soviet Union and the United States, both worked effectively toward brinigng an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. There are certainly more examples big and small, but the fact is that compromise can occur.Thesis: My opponent's thesis is questionable since it seems to equate the law to moral obligation and holds a non sequitir argument with the alternatives argument. My opponent's thesis implies that if something isn't against the law, there's no moral obligation to stop doing whatever it is that the law would or should prohibit. At one time, there was no law prohibiting the discrimination of black people, meaning that at one point, there was no moral obligation to stop discriminating against African Americans. The same goes for slavery, where there was no law prohibiting it, meaning that at one time period, beating, enslaving, abusing African Americans had no moral obligation to be stopped. If you want to look at a modern example from a non-American context, under my opponent's logic, there's no moral obligation to stop the harassment, violence, and executions of gay people in countries like Iran, Iraq, and Uganda because it isn't against the law to do so. My point is that the law is not the arbiter of moral obligation. Morality is the arbiter of moral obligation, and while my opponent seems to focus only on what an organization can and can't do, my case is focusing on the should and looking in the moral scope of benefitting the community rather than the inherently arbitrary nature of the law. In this case, morality is the only authority that I'm appealing to, which is the correct context of this part of the debate rather than the law. The Boy Scouts in some way impact the community and while there are other scouting organization, it is questionable they are even conspcious or not obscure, let alone ubiquitous, meaning that the Boy Scouts would still have a moral obligation regardless.Brand: To state that the reason for the denial of gay membership is irrelevant makes no sense because this is the warrant or piece of logic that satisfies the necessity of denial of gay membership. My opponent's begging the question here by just assuming that the reason is practical and legitimate. I've proven earlier that the basis of such an argument only flows on the implication that compromise cannot exist, and I have clearly proven to you through examples that it can. This argument is also on the implication that there will be more cost than benefit by making this change, and this is all based on the public opinions of the consumers of the product. In America, conservative values are on the decline, especially in the perceptions of the gay community. In a recent Gallup Poll, about 53% of Americans support same-sex marriage. Growing numbers of people are supporting the idea that homosexuality is just fine. My opponent's entire rebuttal rests on the idea that the public opinion is inclined toward conservative values and this will without a doubt lead toward the degredation of the product toward the consumers. Even within the organization itself, there is a schism in the beliefs of gay membership, let alone in the rest of the community. Bottom line, my opponent implies change=bad when he has no warrant to say that it will exactly go this way and begs the question on the reason for the gay denials. If my opponent is looking at this from a cost/benefit analysis, to appeal only to a certain demographic is not just discriminatory, but it's bad business especially in a society turning more toward the left. My opponent states that there is a massive population with traditional conservative values. As arbitrary and questionable as that sounds, I don't really particularly have evidence against that claim, so I'll give my opponent the benefit of the doubt, but this is once again falling against my opponent's premise that compromise cannot occur. This is based on the idea that conservative families don't at some level try to tolerate or even accept gay people, so this is not really a point that helps my opponent out either if he has no warrant to show that compromise cannot occur.