Instigator / Pro
8
1597
rating
22
debates
65.91%
won
Topic
#3426

THBT: SOCIETY would be BETTER OFF if LGBTQ people did not EXIST

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
2

After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
8,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
14
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

THBT: On balance, SOCIETY would be BETTER OFF if LGBTQ people did not EXIST

DEFINITIONS

Society: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

Better off: In a more desirable or advantageous position

LGBTQ: People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer

Exist: have objective reality or being.

All terms should be used in their commonplace understandings

THE DEBATE

~~BOP is shared~~
PRO: Must uphold the resolution and make an argument as to why society would be better off if LGBTQ people did not exist

CON: Shares the burden. CON must provide evidence as to why the resolution is false and prove why society would not be better off, or even (but not required) worse off.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Both sides seem to agree that this resolution is viewed in the lens of "LGBTQ+ people being removed from existence starting today." Nowhere does either seem to claim to be arguing about "LGBTQ+ people being turned into cishets." Viewing it in that light, pro's argument is self contradictory. An existence where one endures hardship, but still possesses the capacity to live a fulfilling life is preferable to nonexistence (which is what pro is advocating for). Preventing the suffering of other people who cannot accept their identity is nowhere near sufficient to justify their annihilation. All of pro's case relies on the fundamentally false assumption that nonexistence is preferable to hardship and that removing the annoyance experienced by bigots is sufficient to justify annihilation of hundreds of millions of people, and pro's case thereby falls apart.

Looking at it that way, con points out that removing all LGBTQ+ people from present and future existence would create butterfly effects (what if the cure for cancer would have been created by a gay man, for example). This is at least some reason to believe that more people existing is better than less people existing, which is more than we get from pro.

This was honestly almost a tie. Pro could've won by just defining the resolution to be that nobody was LGBTQ+; all LGBTQ+ people become cishet. The phrase "LGBTQ+ people do not exist" implies that we are talking about the people not existing, not necessarily saying that LGBTQ+ as an identity does not exist. Pro never challenges that this means removing all LGBTQ+ people from existence entirely as con postulates, and for these reasons that is the definition that I am judging this debate relative to.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ

As far as magical thought experiments go, it's a decent setup; save for the basic flaws of LGBTQ being a very wide and varied group, and the timing and method of removal being open to interpretation (is it they never existed, or magic purple man snaps his fingers and they disappear?).

R1, PRO:
Suffering:
Pro says LGBTQ people cause suffering, and backs this up that they are disproportionately the targets of violent criminals. They also suffer more in their youths for other reasons. Pro concludes they'd be better off not existing.

Persecution:
Pro adds that they are more frequently the victims of violent crazy people in power.

Diseases:
Pro argues that they have higher STD rates.

Social Implications:
Pro argues some pronouns and other cultural shifts make some people uncomfortable.

R1, CON:
Mechanics:
Con treats this as a proposal debate, and catches If the How is missing, they are easily countered with impracticality. He argues that the means by which LGBTQ people are made to cease to exist, will outweigh whatever benefits pro believes will be attained by said removal. He lists three ways it could be evaluated, each of which builds inherent horror to the proposal. Under the best of the three, we have a world without computers to hold this debate on, where the Nazis won (more likely WWII stretched on a bit, but con's argument that they would have won is unchallenged), and Queen's music never came to be.

R2, PRO:
Pro counters "CON's case is entirely irrelevant" which is where I lost faith in him standing a chance. He goes on to argue that it's pro's least bad world choice in which those people never existed (he implies it, without admitting it's from con), and then proceeds to ignore the harms con built out to declare himself the winner and that con might have secretly conceded...

So with half the debate read, we have a hypothetical world ruled by Nazis, without computers, no Queen music or any music inspired by it (honestly, ruled by Nazis would rule out any music made after the 19th century; but con's focus here was on Queen, so for weighing the debate just no Queen); but for the trade off of... A few less victims for the Nazis to murder suffering that fate? Pro declares it to be self-evident that this would be better... Nay is self-evident at this stage.

R2, CON:
Con argues that to create the world pro proposes, would require genocide, rather than magic painless genocide. He attacks the framework of the debate as being too poor to allow a cost/benefit analysis, and adds that pro refuses to clearly pick a means of removal for the comparison.

Civil Rights:
Con builds out that LGBTQ people were key to the civil rights movement. And that while there's strife from it, it's healthy strife which helps us grow.

Computers:
Con repeats

Queen:
Con repeats.

Violent crazy people:
Con points out that violent crazy people have issues that make them violent and crazy, so removing one target, they would substitute another.

R3, PRO:
Pro coasts into the finish, repeating some of his harms without challenging the harms con listed. He has one decent note against the civil rights movement, that because there's no evidence for what it would really look like, we can dismiss it... Which while decent, adds a lot of validity to cons points against the pro side being able to be weighted at all without evidence.

R3, CON:
Con repeats that it cannot be determined to be better without weighing it.

...

Arguments: Con
This is a landslide. Pro offered no challenge to Nazis taking over the world or cons other harms from a concurrent world where every LGBTQ person never existed, and while con leaned more on how impossible to weigh the benefits would be (a little risky with shared BoP), he well established some massive harms.