Debate club? (Uh-oh)

any person that thinks that forcing students to argue for discrimination against people [who will doubtlessly be involved in some way, such as here] is okay is pretty disgusting tbh

 

Mate, are you serious? Every topic that's not culturally insensitive is completely irrelevant to the real world. Debate is primarily training to become a politician or a lawyer, and stuff like this is what you talk about in those careers. Racism, homophobia, and sexism are all wonderful topics, because they spur strong emotions within debaters, forcing them to try harder.

Finally, it's not offensive at all because it's very well-understood in debate that you're not always fighting for what you believe in, and whatever you say in the debate is not held against you outside of it.

 

uggh I hate suggesting this kind of thing but...
If you allow homosexuality, which isn't procreative, what is stopping people from allowing incest, bestiality, etc.
This is a terrible topic. Could you imagine if you had a topic saying argue for segregation? That would never happen. SO hurtful. But good luck anyway.

 

This is a very very tough one actually. Gay marriage is one thing, but outlawing homosexuality itself is totally a different topic. Are you sure it's not gay marriage should illegal but the act of homosexuality itself?

You might want to propose redefining the topic to gay marriage. Outlawing the act of a person having intimacy with the same sex is WAY to imbalanced. There are simply no secular arguments out there for it.

If I really have to do this, I recommend going along the lines of "tradition", your opening statement can be that society is not ready for homosexuality and making it legal cause more harm than good.

General strategy: make sure you steer away from the argument that homosexuality is wrong, and focus on the fact that it's illegal to protect the people as it is too radical a change for today's society. It's good that you're the proposition because the opposition can easily fall into the trap of arguing that it is not immoral blah blah blah, and hence they will stumble on figuring out a rebuttal against your argument for protection of society itself. If they fall into the trap of rebutting that society is ready for it and outlawing it will cause more pain to people, counter rebut with the fact that any sort of gay bashing etc is not the topic of the debate, that should be outlawed regardless. your argument is for the banning of acts of homosexuality itself to encourage people with homosexual tendencies to find other sources of happiness since expressing it might bring harm to themselves in light of today's society.

It's a far far stretch. But it might be the best way for you to lose the argument yet win the debate.

 

It's challenging and hard, all right. What if you tell your teacher that you believe homosexuality is fine and that it should be accepted. If there's no way at all of a chance that you will change your topic, then maybe the teacher will at least understand that you're going to lie about what you believe... Also, I take it your school is against homosexuality, right?

Good luck on getting that money and finding a way out of this! :goodluck:

 

I think perhaps part of it may lie in rebutting their comments, and using thing like a reduced number of hate crimes etc. if no-one is openly homosexual, rather than completely abandoning your beliefs. Try to find ways that outlawing homosexuality could actually benefit everyone.

There's always the happy medium, although that may be ineffective in a topic like this with such specific wording. Argue that perhaps they could outlaw PUBLIC homosexuality.

From one debater to another, good luck

 

Of course I'm serious. First off, this issue isn't worth talking about. Homosexuality is legal in America and always will be: perhaps it's worth debating marriage equality, but that's a different can of worms. There are clearly topics that aren't up for debate. No school now would ever force a kid to argue that the civil rights act was wrong, Abraham Lincoln shouldn't have freed the slaves, or any other of many terrible things.

And to say it's not offensive because it's well understood that you don't necessarily believe your arguments doesn't soften the blow for me because there are very real, very terrible people who are making these arguments. And there very well could be confused gay kids in the crowd who are hurt by being made to listen to a vitriolic argument such as this. No debate club would ever force a racial minority to debate that white people are superior, that's clearly immoral and all arguments one could make are offensive, outdated, and plain wrong. So why is it okay to make a gay kid give a lecture on why his way of life should be illegal?

Sorry that I tend to the extreme in my analogies, but I feel it's much easier to make my point in that way.