Gay marriage

Thanks for challenging me specifically to this debate Ken. Ken places some burdens on me. I don't see why I need to meet these burdens to uphold gay marriage, but I'll discuss them briefly. 1. Well-being of children: ken, in his opening, wants to discuss marriage internationally and across cultures. I'll show that marriage fails to protect children. However, social services departments in each state are responsible for preventing child abuse and neglect, even among co-habiting or single parents. The state takes zero additional measures to ensure that children in marriages are protected, above and beyond what it already does for all children. 2. The right to marry/equal protection. Homosexuality is not a choice. As I've shown in previous debates, researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland have spliced a homosexuality gene into the DNA of fruit flies, which makes the fruit flies shun females and mate with males instead. Time Magazine describes the experiment as follows: "the female flies are cowering in groups at the top and bottom of the jars. The males, meanwhile, are having a party -- no, an orgy -- among themselves." [1] According to New Scientist, a similar gene has been discovered in female mice. [1] Bruce Bahemihl, Ph.D., documents 1500 species that exhibit homosexuality, at rates ranging from 5% to 25%. [1] If attraction to a particular gender is not a choice, then gay people are being denied a right that straight people have, namely the right to marry. Telling gays that they can marry someone of the opposite gender is a false choice. The 14th Amendment guarantees "equal protection under the law" and being denied marriage rights is not equal protection. The Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board that separate is inherently unequal. Even domestic partnership states have failed to provide all the same rights to domestic partnerships as to full marriages. This is because people who dislike homosexuality will always intervene to prevent full rights being conferred to domestic partners, much in the same way that Southern states intervened to provide inferior schools to African Americans under segregation. Lastly, telling someone that he or she can't use the "real word" for what they are doing is insulting. It implies that gays are just playing house, not actually married. This would be tantamount to saying that interracial marriage was allowed but they would have to call their marriage an "interracial union" not a marriage. 3 and 4. Gay marriage is beneficial to states The gay marriage ban costs California $1 billion every 6 years. [2] Marriage is a big industry that stimulates businesses (bakeries, photographers, DJ's, etc) in the state and generates tax revenue. $1 billion is a lot in California. Cutting $1 billion from the University of California's budget is ultimately what forced them to triple student fees over the last 10 years. == Broader discussion of the issues == My opponent makes marriage seem like it is the best institution ever invented throughout the world. However, marriage makes women much more likely to be abused and makes it harder for them to leave an abusive spouse. Because the abuser becomes more attached to the victim if they were married, divorced/separated women were nearly twice as likely to suffer physical attacks from their abusers as were never married women. [3] Children in abusive households are more likely to become abusers and suffer abuse themselves. Internationally, marriage is often used as a means of control, not as an institution designed to protect children. According to UNICEF, 80% of marriages in Afghanistan are forced and 57% of all marriages involve girls between the ages of 8 and 16. [4] These young girls are routinely raped by their much older husbands. This institution hardly seems like it was designed to protect children. The point is: marriage, by itself, does not automatically make children better off. The only reason that marriage is often good for children is because the TYPES OF PEOPLE who get married tend to be much more stable people and thus much more stable parents. But the institution of marriage doesn't automatically transform abusive drug addicts into model fathers. My opponent's first blog source claims that in fact, marriage does force father's to be there and provide financial support. This blog obviously doesn't understand that child support depends merely on a proof of parentage, not on marriage. And wives cannot exactly take their husbands to court for not spending enough time with their kids. My opponent keeps claiming that through marriage, the *state* helps establish stability. I would like him to name ONE THING the state does to help the children of married couples that it DOES NOT do to help the children of single or co-habiting parents. All the studies of co-habiting partners are flawed because it's correlation, not causation. The people who tend to cohabit are more unstable people than the people who choose to marry. Multiple studies show that cohabiting partners are more likely than married people to abuse alcohol and drugs. It's not like if you force drug addicts to marry that they will suddenly become perfect parents. Lastly, the reason my opponent CLEARLY loses this debate is because gay couples adopt kids. According to the US Census Bureau, 65000 children are living in the households of gay parents. [5] If my opponent is right that marriage confers stability, then married gay parents are better than unmarried gay parents. [1] http://www.debate.org... [2] http://online.wsj.com... [3] http://www.measuredhs.com... [4] http://www.rferl.org... [5] http://www.nytimes.com...