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The Debate Digest
A steady supply of pro/con articles to help you deliberate, take a stand, take action, vote, and back yourself up.
PRO: Procreation is no prerequisite for marriage and excluding gays"Religion & Ethics - Same-Sex Marriage: Procreation." BBC. February 24th, 2007: "society does not insist that those who want to marry demonstrate that they can and will have children: 1. heterosexuals who cannot have children are allowed to marry. 2. heterosexuals who don't want to have children are allowed to marry. 3. heterosexuals who don't want to have sex are allowed to marry (although the partners must have agreed to this before marriage). 4. heterosexuals who can't have sex because one partner is in prison for life are allowed to marry. 5. heterosexuals can use technical assistance to have children. 6. same-sex couples can have children using the same methods."
CON: Marriage is about reproduction and family; can't include gaysMargarette Somerville. "The case against gay marriage." McGill Center for Medicine, Ethics and Law. April 29, 2003: "Marriage is, and has been for millennia, the institution that forms and upholds for society, the cultural and social values and symbols related to procreation. That is, it establishes the values that govern the transmission of human life to the next generation and the nurturing of that life in the basic societal unit, the family. [...] To change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would destroy its capacity to function in the ways outlined above, because it could no longer represent the inherently procreative relationship of opposite-sex pair-bonding."
Recent Debate Digest articles
Capitalism vs socialism - Which is the superior system, capitalism or socialism? - February 19th, 2010.
Corporate personhood - Should corporations be treated as legal persons with equivalent rights? - February 10th, 2010.
Unlimited spending in elections - Should corporations be able to spend w/o limit on election ads as ruled by SCOTUS? - February 4th, 2010.
Big government - Is big, more liberal government better than small, conservative government? - January 27th, 2010.
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March 9th. Stc123 vandalized Debate: Gun control and his/her edits were reverted.
March 6th. Lenkahabetinova. added the following argument to Debate: Trade vs aid: "Free trade benefits developing countries more than protectionism. People naturally want to trade with each other, seeking to turn their particular resources or skills to their advantage. All too often trade is limited not because government action is needed, but because the government actually gets in the way with restrictive rules and statist controls. For example, regardless of their terms of trade with developed nations, developing countries could all become more prosperous if they removed the barriers they have erected to trade with each other. Putting the emphasis on trade rather than aid redirects attention from what developed states should or could be doing for the developing world, to what developing countries can and should do for themselves."
March 1-5: Debate: Gay marriage was built-out on Debatepedia for the Debate Digest. It is the most comprehensive pro/con article available on the topic, representing a major achievement and contribution to this historic controversy and settling it.
March 2: Suzy argued against Kangaroo culling in Australia on the basis that Kangaroos are native to Australia, living in harmony with the environment, and that it is unfair to kill them for not cooperating with unnatural farmland.
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