Definitions and BoP

It occurs to me that perhaps the most useful new feature that EDEB8.com could acquire at this point are two text entries for a debate for defining key terms and the BoP.

I was looking in the open debates and say "gay marriage should be legal."

The definition of gay marriage is of crucial importance to such a resolution, indeed it could be argued that saying "x should be legal" is a misnomer if "x" is a set of positive privileges.

It is like saying "food stamps should be legal" when the real issue is not making some behavior permissible but making it a duty.

ADreamOfLiberty: I always use the free format section at the bottom of the "rules" page when setting up the debate for this. I fully agree with you in principle that these things should be clearly understood BEFORE a debate is accepted.

I think we can go overboard though - "Gay Marriage should be legal"?
How else can Gay Marriage be defined other than the marriage of two gay people?

I get what you're saying about the second part, permissible vs duty. On that issue, I'd say that its up to the original poster to write their resolution properly. " Legal" means permissible. They shouldn't use that term if that's not what they mean.

nzlockie: Marriage has variants of meaning that make a crucial difference in morality and politics.

For instance, if you said marriage was just two people's commitment of love to each other; I would say "of course it should be legal" as an extension of my adherance to the principle of liberty.

The problem is you can promise love, monogamy, commitment, and all sorts of things to anybody you want in practically every civilized nation on earth. That is not what proponents of 'gay marriage' want.

They want legal and moral recognition. They want the law to say "your relationship is special, equal to heterosexual relationships and deserving of mandatory public support."

I must oppose that for the same reason I supported the first variant, the liberty principle.

In the first case the demand is genuinely a subset of "let me be unless you can prove what I am doing is immoral" while the second case is "let me be free to force you to treat me with deference."

There are many such situations like this as well.

ADreamOfLiberty: I think in the context of debate, when you're discussing whether an event should be legal, it is logical to assume that "marriage" would be defined as the LEGAL union of two people - in other words, your second definition.

I think in that context, anyone applying the first definition would be over stretching for sure.

For me, it ruins a conversation when people continually existentialise everything. I think terms need to be defined when there is a reasonable chance that they could be misconstrued by either party. Reasonable doesn't mean any.

nzlockie: Yet... when I debate the issue I am repeatedly told that I am trying to interfere with a private decision, that I hate gays, that I don't believe in equality.

If the people who so accuse me are committing an equivocation fallacy, definitions are the only way to prove it. If definitions are not given before hand people can spend pages and pages flip flopping.

ADreamOfLiberty: Haters gonna hate bro. I feel you.

Yo.

ADreamOfLiberty: Hey ADOL - definitions are kind of hard to build in to secret topics. In most RL formal debates the affirmative just gets to define it, so long as they're not being totally unreasonable. Would it be useful, perhaps, if:

a) I added a little note clarifying that definitions should be put in the additional rules box
b) I created a set of "standard" rules for random debates and linked them in the additional rules of random topics

?

admin: I like a.

admin: I like A and B.

I like a and b too.

Pinkie: ... and I did this 3 months or so ago

admin: I know.