For what is now the 10th time I will link you to Loving v. Virginia. Please do us both a favor and read this so that we can stop wasting time on the whole "marriage isn't a right" benefit.

Also your entire argument about licenses is a fallacy. You give examples of rights that don't require licenses and privileges that do require licenses making the assumption that everything must fall into these two categories. This is called excluding the middle. What if we took the right to own a gun, as guaranteed in the constitution? Gun ownership often requires a license and yet is still a right.

In short: your argument is bullshit.

I'm sorry but what are you talking about? Homosexual couples are denied marriage licenses. Clearly people are being given different rights.

If what you are trying to argue is that "homosexuals can get married, just not to someone of the same sex" then this too shows that people have rights that are not equal, but seperate. Allow me to explain: do you agree that men and women should be equal under the law? Do you agree that this means they should have the same rights? Assuming you said yes then how is it possible that a women is allowed to marry people that a man is not, and vice versa? There rights are considered "seperate but equal" but we know that seperate but equal is inherently unequal. This is the exact same issue that was being addressed in Loving vs. Virginia, because people had the same rights to marry within their own race, and therefore were considered to have the same rights.

You keep trying to frame this question in ways where you don't seem ridiculous in wanting to deny marriage to homosexuals, but everytime you come off sounding worse and worse. You are fighting a strawman anyway, because gays would be fine if everything was civil unions and marriage was left up to churches, but in the vast majority of states homosexual unions aren't recognized at all, and in the majority of those states that do recognize same sex unions the rights are not equal to those of marriage (for example if they move to another state, they lose whatever rights were granted by the state where they got the union).

It's like you can't rationally articulate why you don't think gays should get married but you just feel that they shouldn't and therefore are willing to go through this hilarious convoluted logic in order to justify your feelings.

We have had this same argument about a dozen times at this point and hopefully this time you will take away something useful and we won't see anymore of these dumb debates.

Well the entirety of the supreme court disagrees with you, but hey what do they know about rights?

What if you can't join the military for, let's say, health reasons? Then what?

Or what if the issue isn't that you don't have a job, but that you don't make enough money from your current job to afford healthcare for your whole family.

Or what if you have a kid who is uninsurable because of preexisting conditions.

But yeah other than those minor flaws, I guess the system is perfect.

Wow, a strawman argument of a legitamate position...what else is new Joe?

What the two sides should be are:

1) It is something the government cannot punish you for excersising (like the right not to get thrown in jail for speaking freely)

2) It is something that the government must protect (like the right to property, so people don't steal it from you).

My answer would be, both. There are certain rights that put limitations of the government, and others that sometimes require government intervention to ensure. This usually means spending some money (paying for a police force, judges, etc...)

Could you post the link again, it's not working for me. Thanks.

You get along fine by yourself? Consider this:

-Every day you eat food and possibly take medicine, that you know is safe because it is approved by the food and drug administration

-You know what the weather is going to be like because of satalites designed built and launched by NASA

-You check the time, which you know everyone uses because it is regulated by congress and kept accurately the the National Institute of Standards and Technology

-You drive a car that you know is safe thanks to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and drive it on roads built and monitored by local state and federal agencies.

-You then get to work and use the internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration

-During this whole day you do not get killed, carjacked or robbed because of local, state, and federal law enforcement keeping you safe

But of course you get by fine on your own, don't you Joe?

Let's face it, unless you go off into the woods to live, you are not taking care of yourself, so get some perspective and realize that there are a lot of things we need the government for, and those services require money; money that I am more then willing to pay to enjoy the quality of life I am fortunate enough to have because I was born in the U.S.A.

People aren't asking for handouts: they are trying to improve the lives of everyone, and that requires everyone to chip in...themselves included unless you assume that all democrats are poor, and all republicans are rich which is an absurd assumption.

Well, other than microbes that can digest plastic (as joe suggested) there isn't much we can do. The pieces are far to small, and the area is much too large for there to be a feasable solution for cleanup. All we can really do at this point is stop adding plastic to the oceans by doing a better job of recycling and stop dumping garbage in the ocean.

Hell if I know... the important thing is not the name however, but instead the evidence which undeniably points to a warming earth because of human activity.

Actually, what happened with the volcano is very different than the effect that CO2 has on our atmosphere.

When a volcano erupts it throws up a tremendous amount of dust and dirt into the atmosphere, which then reflects the sun's light. The same effect (more or less) can be achieved by painting ones roof white. Obviously car exhaust does not reflect radiation from the sun, but instead traps the radiation and re-emits it as heat.

Active volcanos that aren't erupting tend to actually spew CO2 into the atmosphere however, so in that way they do contribute to global warming, but not even close to the level that human emissions contribute.

I guess people like you are willing to take any fact out of context to try and prove your point though... watching all that fox news must have rubbed off on you.

Joe. How many times are you going to make me prove you wrong on this issue? There are a million things wrong with what this guy says, but let's stick to the graph that he claims shows a global cooling.

I am far too tired of repeating myself, so instead watch this video:

Since you chose to copy and paste your argument into a debate, I shall do the same with my reply:

Force themselves into a club where there not wanted?

How does any gay getting married effect any straight couple? Your argument, which you continue to repeat time and time again, is ridiculous, and you know it.

All gays want is equality, and if the government stopped using the word marriage but instead used civil unions that would be great. Look at this site that advocates equal marriage rights. It gives a number of scenarios:

We want the Flag of Equal Marriage to be complete, with all 50 stars lit up. We see three routes to marriage equality, as we define it:

1. Every individual state could pass a law allowing same-sex marriage.

2. The federal government could repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and allow same-sex marriage at the federal level, overriding all state-level bans.

3. The term "marriage" could be removed from state and/or federal laws, turning all "marriages" into civil unions in the eyes of the government. PLUS, same-sex civil unions would need to be recognized in all 50 states or at the federal level.

So here you're arguing a straw man "gays aren't being reasonable" argument.

Back to the whole "joining a club thing" and why it's bullshit. When African-Americans and other minorities "forced" their way into predominately white institutions, and clearly weren't wanted, should they have stopped?

In addition, marriage isn't a club. There aren't members only meetings where only married people are allowed to get into, and married people don't have to do anything for other married couples. Marriage is the legal (and often religious/cultural) union of two people who love each other and intend to spend the rest of their lives together. So allow me to repeat: how does letting gays marry affect, even a little bit, straight married couples? What gives them the right to deny those who want to pursue happiness with the one they love, legal sanction to do so?

If this is the best argument that you can come up with for opposing gay marriage, maybe you need to reevaluate your position and realize how ridiculous you sound (even more so than usual).

So basically he's an attention whore?

No wonder you seem to like him so much.

I never said your viewpoint violates the rights of anyone. No viewpoint on its own violates anyones rights, but in a democracy we vote based on viewpoints, and often times when this happens people have rights denied.

Are you saying that people like the guy in the article aren't actually intolerant?

And that's why people criticize you.... when you try to tell people things like this they will laugh at you because you would be so wrong that it hurts.

The only difference between "micro" and "macro" evolution is time scale. Many small mutations over long periods of time accumulate to the point where the final species is distinct from the original. To help you understand this, imagine the process of human aging:

A baby never transforms into an old man through miraculous transformation. Instead it goes through a number of small, virtually undetectable changes, until the final result is something that is completely different from the original. If you looked at any two consecutive days, there would appear to be no difference, and in fact you would probably have difficulty determining which day came after the other. However, when these changes accumulate over time we get an old man.

In addition, I'm guessing that you are unaware that we have actually seen speciation occur both in nature and in controlled experiments... so here you're just wrong... it does happen.

And speaking of things you're wrong about:

All you have in the fossil record are fully formed and fully functional creatures; there are no transitional forms, none.

Actually, what we have in the fossil record are examples of more generalized forms from later periods of time changing into more complex organisms.... but don't take my word for it:

I love it when people like to paint either side as extreme and then put themselves in the middle. Fantastic.

What if we had approached the civil rights movement the same way? What if people hadn't been afraid to offend those who they recognized as being actually intolerant?

I'm fine with people having the right to express their viewpoints, but I have the right to criticize them, because criticism of someone's views does not violate their rights. Supporting policies that would discriminate against homosexuals? Well, that would infringe on a number of rights wouldn't it?

Well why don't you tell me what parts you disagree with, because: the first paragraph is merely statements of facts, which, if you would like I can back up with an incredible amount of sources. The second paragraph talks about the validity of evolution, which is indisputable (but if you would like to try, be my guest.) The third sentence is a challenge to you to provide some alternative to evolution by natural selection as to the diversity of life on this planet. I also stand by my last sentence, because I believe it to be the truth.

There is nothing incredible about evolution, and no "belief" is required. We see small mutations occurring over short periods of time, and know that these mutations are selected by the environment in which a species lives, and that these mutations can accumulate.

We also see substantial evidence of a gradual evolution from more general organisms to more complex organisms in the fossil record. The farther back you go, the more general these forms become. In fact, the fossil record is so extensive that we can trace virtually every important step in the evolution of most modern animals including humans.

Our fossil record is so good that scientists have actually been able to predict where fossils of a certain transitional form should be found, went to that place, and found the fossils they had predicted. Amazing, right? (By the way, the fossils were whale ancestors).

There is not one step in this entire process that could be considered "incredible" and your own incredulity of evolution is further evidence of your ignorance on the subject. I would suggest reading a book about it, or even watching a video (there are literally thousands on the internet). Perhaps then we can have an intelligent conversation about the subject, and I won't have to listen to your baseless claims about evolution.

How does allowing homosexuals to live their lifestyles openly hurt our society? Give me a single legitimate reason, and I'll concede the point.

First the evolution debate, now this.... maybe it's your brains that have fallen out.

This is dumb even for you, and you know it Joe.

I understand you just want to put up controversial debates, but come on... evolution? How about we debate gravity next?

When people use the term "Darwinism" it usually means (but not always) that they don't really understand the science of evolution. While it is true that Darwin did propose the basic concept of evolution (small mutations, selected by their ability to help an organism to have offspring, accumulate over time causing speciation) there are a number of other factors that contribute to evolution that Darwin didn't know about. This is not because he was dumb, but because there was no way to know at the time. Lucky for us, science advances our knowledge of the world, and we have now been able to fill in the gaps thanks to discoveries in genetics, archeology, and biology as a whole.

Darwin for example couldn't explain how traits were passed from generation to generation. We now know that this is from genetics, and with the study of genetics we have actually found certain ways in which organisms evolve which are not, in fact "Darwinian." Horizontal gene transfer is one example. I don't want to go into any great detail here, but essentially what happens is, genetic information is passed between two different species, as opposed to being passed from generation to generation. If you want a more detailed explanation here is the wiki article.

So in a sense, yes, evolution is not completely Darwinian... only predominately Darwinian in that:

1. Genetic mutations occur in species.

2. These mutations are sometimes beneficial to the survival of that species.

3. Those mutations which are beneficial allow members of the species that carry that mutation to pass the mutation onto their young.

4. These mutations can accumulate over time.

5. Eventually the accumulation of mutations will lead to more complex organisms.

This process has been observed over shorter time periods by scientists in both controlled experiments and nature, and observed over much longer periods of time in the fossil record.

All of these finds have been validated by the fact that we now have the ability to sequence DNA, proving (beyond any reasonable doubt) the fact that evolution is the absolute best explanation for the evidence, and, despite over 100 years of study, has not been shown to be invalid in even one instance.

So now I would like to ask you a question. How do you account for the evidence (fossils, DNA, morphology, embryology, observed instances of evolution etc...)? It sounds like you either don't understand the evidence, don't understand the theory or (most likely) both.

It would be better if we stopped arresting people for crimes that don't hurt anyone... like say possession of marijuana. There are more people arrested for marijuana than all other violent crimes combined (source) and legalizing marijuana would take away markets from violent drug trafficking organizations which would in turn mean less murders, and criminals associated with these organizations.

Problem solved, money saved.

Are you saying that because of his political views he was a bad person?

Is that how you feel about everyone who doesn't agree with you?

Remember my comments about you being partisan?

I would expect something like this from Joe, but I hoped you might be able to give a slightly more intelligent comment.

Well, considering we pay more on healthcare then any other nation, I'd say that reform will only help this problem.