Instigator / Pro
2
1417
rating
27
debates
24.07%
won
Topic
#3483

Being LGBT is nothing to be proud of

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
3
Better sources
0
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
1

After 1 vote and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...

blamonkey
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
15,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
7
1677
rating
24
debates
93.75%
won
Description

Just in time for "pride" month. I decided to put this debate forward

rules:

* no logical fallacies
* opponents may not insult each other

pro:

* Has to give reasons why the lgbt community is bad for society
* Has to provide reasons why being lgbt is nothing to be proud of

con:

* Has to oppose pro

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@Conservallectual

Good debate

At least I tried and that's what matters

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@oromagi

Thank you for the vote!

RFD:BEING LGBT is NOTHING to be PROUD of

PRO has the BURDEN of PROOF to show that no LGBT have any cause for pride.

PRO cuts his own throat from the start by prohibiting logical fallacies while exhibiting an inferior capacity for reason generally and failing to define terms.

The only argument addressing LGBT generally is that PRO argues that heterosexual couples can have children, homosexual couples can't. Beyond the obvious falseness of the claim (I personally know many LGBTQ people with children- some adopted but mostly biological parentage), PRO never bothers to explain why childlessness should deny any possibility of pride. We are 8 billion humans on a planet with a maximum carrying capacity of 2 billion humans. Since non-reproducing couples are decreasing the demand on overstrained resources while reproducing couples increase the strain- it seems rational to this voter to take more pride in non-production. I suppose there are plenty of arguments for parental pride or non-parental non-pride to be made but PRO makes zero effort- he just makes a gigantic claim without offering one shred of evidence and then moves on.

PRO argues that gays and lesbians have nothing to be proud of because 1) Gay men suffer from one particular disease more than straight people 2) Lesbians suffer from one particular disease more 3) Lesbians lifestyles increase cancer risks, and 4) gays generally have a shorter lifespan. PRO weakens his claims significantly by offering a list of notable gay people killed by AIDS and then can only come up with one- strongly minimizing the impact he is promoting.

PRO argues that trans folks can't be proud because they have high suicide rates.

This voter reflects that US soldiers and NFL players also are suffer from higher rates of some diseases and have much higher suicide rates and shorter lifespans than average. If PRO's arguments are sufficient to disqualify any pride from LGBT then it follows that US soldiers and NFL players likewise have no cause for pride.

This voter ignores PRO's specific claims about asexual, non-binary, and pansexual people since those specific identities are irrelevant to our subject LGBT people, however much overlapping.

PRO's whole argument is chock-a-block with more logical fallacies then is worth counting, both formal and informal. Just for starters, PRO never once fully distributes any argument: some L are X, some G are Y, some T are Z, therefore no LGBT are A. PRO draws a negative conclusion from exclusively affirmative premises.

CON wisely begins by defining PRIDE and then intelligently argues that if pride itself can be shown to have value for LGBT people, then that value justifies PRIDE beyond PRO's claim of zero pride, zero value from pride. PRO effectively lays out two areas where LGBT demands for self-respect have resulted in positive change: mental health and civil rights politics.

CON devastates PRO's health argument with some basic rational inquiry but most effectively condemns the whole of PRO's argument with " Pro offers no warrants. He offers statistics, but never tells us why the material conditions of homosexuals throughout society should dictate whether they feel “pride.”
That's PRO's failure in a nutshell, repeated after Trans arguments: "even if the scientific evidence is wholly discounted, Pro never explains why, if gender really is a binary, it matters in respect to expressing and possessing pride."

PRO begins ROUND2 by stating that his religion considers pride to be both sin and mental illness- self-destructing his argument completely. If PRIDE is evil and PRO concludes that LGBT have none of that evil- well isn't that lack of evil itself something to be proud of? PRO makes no effort to improve or extend his R1 here but makes a large number of irrational, incredible, unverified generalizations: "Coming out doesn't exist," "the govt. does not get involved with people's bedrooms (this on the weekend that the US Supreme Court tore down fifty years of precedent for US right to privacy). " Our society is very, very accepting of gay people." (This after a week following major attacks on Pride parades in Oslo, Warsaw, and Coeur D' Alene). "Being gay isn't natural" (with disease and no children as evidence - therefore all people with disease or infertility are unnatural? Whew!) "Being gay is condemned by the bible," gays are often very promiscuous" etc. PRO seems to feel no responsibility to connect his bold unjustified claims to his thesis. Eating pork is condemned by the BIble, for example, shall all bacon lovers therefore be stripped of all PRIDE? JFK was promiscuous- did JFK therefore have no reason to be proud? CON shoots these wild claims down quite effectively in the lightning round.

PRO calls one of CON's arguments "a strawman" giving further evidence that PRO does not understand how logical fallacies work in spite of his prohibition against them. CON argued that since lesbians have lower HIV rates than straight people, doesn't it follow by PRO's reasoning that straight people likewise have no cause for PRIDE relative to lesbians? That is not a strawman argument, that is directly relevant and destructive to PRO's claim that gay men's increased HIV prevalence relative to straight people is disqualifying for any PRIDE.

In R3, PRO concedes the whole of CON's counterargument in his first four words, "self-respect is important" The remainder of PRO's R3 is repetition or irrelevant to thesis (biblical slavery, asexuality, etc).

CON effectively buries PRO's claims:

"Pro never articulates a clear metric for PRIDE" (or even bothers to define it)
" Pro’s pseudo-metrics contain double standards."
"Pro never comes up with an appropriate mechanism to weigh this debate"

PRO did give a few anecdotal reasons why the LGBT community is bad for society but never considered these in balance with the good LGBT people bring to society or the harms non-LGBT people bring to society.
PRO utterly failed to explain PRIDE or why LGBT might be entirely undeserving or by what authority such judgement was issued.
CON effectively demonstrates the lack of rational analysis in PRO's anecdotes and affirms PRIDE as healing mechanism for LGBT in terms of mental health and civil rights.
ARGUMENTS to CON

PRO uses 5 authentic scientific sources in reasonable context.
PRO cites the Bible eight times without once ever explaining why the literature of ancient middle-eastern patriarchs might prove relevant to a literate, educated, rational, post-enlightenment global society.
PRO cites two self-publishing sources that are identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups: Paul Cameron's Family Research Institute and Joseph Nicolosi's NARTH.

Paul Cameron's sampling of obituaries in 1994 for AIDS as a cause of death in not just NOT science, it is cherry-picking AIDS deaths at the height of the epidemic and then extrapolating life expectancies for all LGBT from the most pessimistic data possible. It's like extrapolating US life expectancies based on New Jersey nursing facilities in the Spring of 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic before vaccines. Just pure shit in terms of scientific method.

At least Nicolosi's anecdotal website made no pretense at science.

At one point PRO just links to Youtube in place of making an argument.

By contrast, CON has many more sources, all relevant to argument. The science PRO sourced appeared to be peer-reviewed, objective, and published in major journals. None of CON's sources appeared to be discredited by the APA as unscientific or by the SPLC as hate speech.

SOURCES to CON

I was tempted to award CON conduct in light of PRO's prohibition against logical fallacies which he violated with impunity while CON carefully avoided any glaring inconsistencies or irrelevancies but since all other conduct was otherwise fair I think I'll let that drop.

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@Phenenas

Sorry but that wasn’t meant to insult the apostle Paul who is one of the heavenly church fathers(which is far more than any dad can claim and definitely more than any ace). Ace have never had any influence in history.

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@FLRW

No Jesus was not gay. Jesus was the sinless son of God. This is blasphemy and sacrilege. Reading the verses around this verse I can say that this verse seems to saying that you should not call those who correct you from sin “weaklings”. When you study the Bible you shall not pluck single verses and interpret them on their own but also read the surrounding verses to get a clear view of context.

Wasn't Jesus LGBT? The NIV translation of Matt 5:22 reads “anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court”. The original Greek text does not include “sister”, and the word “raca” is most likely a transliteration of the Aramaic word “rakkah”, which is the feminine form of the adjective that means “to be tender, weak, or soft”, so this would be comparable to calling a man a “sissy” (or worse).

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@Conservallectual

> Imagine living a boring life without a partner or kids.

Why would you insult Paul the Apostle like that? Clearly, you're not a very good Christian.

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@Intelligence_06

In this debate I explain why the concept of “gay pride” is completely retarded.

Course you are not “proud” of it. You are not proud of being a human, it just happens.

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@Phenenas

dont worry, this debate is also about that.

I would gladly argue against the notion that being LGBT is bad for society. I don't think I'd be ready to argue that it's something to be proud of, it's just a neutral characteristic that I think should be accepted by society and not discriminated against by bigots.

Is the topic "Being LGBT is nothing to be proud of" or, as stated in the description "reasons why the lgbt community is bad for society"