Neil Simpson has the best online debates. Here’s the post that kicked it all off.

Excerpt:

Here’s why I am free to support real marriage in the public square:

1. That First Amendment thingy.  We’re allowed to let our religious views inform our political views whether you like it or not. It doesn’t inhibit religious freedoms, it protects them.

2. My religion tells me that stealing, perjury, gay bashing and murder are also wrong.  Do you object to me letting those views inform my political views, or just the views you don’t like?

3. Lots of churches are thoroughly pro-gay, such as the UCC and the Episcopals.  I don’t recall you objecting to their advancement of the pro-gay cause.  If you were being consistent and if you really opposed any religious beliefs in the public square, shouldn’t you be objecting to their views just as strenuously?  Why do you just use that argument against views you disagree with?

4. You are begging the question by assuming what you should be proving.  You claim that we are denying “rights” to gays but you must change the definition of the word in question to draw that conclusion.  But the whole debate is whether to change the word and give them a new right.  You cheat and pretend that we’ve already changed the word and given them the right and then insist that we’re denying this existing right.  Sadly, pro-gay apologists commit this fallacy so reflexively that I doubt you realize what you are doing….

5. Finally, and most importantly, I didn’t bring up religion.  You did.  I can argue this topic without it — though of course, if you want to know Jesus’ views on it I’ll be glad to share the biblical view with you.

To give you a hint of how things are going over there with Neil, I’ve excerpted a sample exchange from the comments.

Sample exchange:

morsec0de writes:

Denying homosexuals the ability to marry each other has no secular justification.

Neil writes:

By nature and design [same-sex marriages] do not produce the next generation. Please don’t come back and tell me about infertile couples, those who use birth control, etc., as that isn’t the point I just made. My point is that by nature only heterosexual unions can produce children.

Homosexual couples can never provide a mother and father to a child, which by nature and design is the ideal. Again, just because there are non-traditional families doesn’t mean we shouldn’t encourage the ideal.

My own argument against same-sex marriage is here. Notice that it is completely fact-based, without even a hint of religion. That’s the way we roll on the Wintery Knight Blog.