Sorry, but rules against flaming and personal attacks are beneficial to intelligent discussion because it forces people to focus on their actual arguments instead of resorting to childish name calling. Franco may have an opinion people disagree with but he is still a regular contributing member and the rules regarding personal attacks apply to him, too.

That's not to say you can't disagree with him or even insult his position on a particular topic but resorting to personal attacks won't be tolerated.

That's really what I'm arguing for. I think that the people here are insulting his position, which in this instance, can't really help but insult him at the same time.

I think its definitely possible to argue against or show dissaproval of a person's position without resorting to insulting them personally. We've noticed some personal attacks in here and I personally can observe that they were unnessecery to get the point across.

This is all very well, but Franco has hardly made any real attempt to indulge himself in intelligent debate and neither has he made any real attempt to explain his position. He just takes the inflammatary posture of this is wrong, that is wrong, but I'm ok with it, even though I don't like it, but it makes no difference as its never going to happen anyway etc. If ever a troll wanted to get up people's noses he certainly knows how to do it. He's yet to try and actually explain his position, if he's going to post such controversial opinions, he at least owes this forum some kind of explanation.

I think what I'd like to see is some kind of justification from him that his convictions of homosexuality being morally wrong are valid enough to MERIT homosexual marriage from being prohibited.
We'd mind less if he was just honest and said he was uncomfortable with it, but what I'd like to see is an explanation as to where exactly these convictions are founded.

Separating emotion from logic is something that comes with time and practice. It may be that Franco hasn't had a lot of experience with debates of this nature. Continuing to berate him is not going to change his opinion, or make him support it if he's operating on emotion. I personally have just as difficult a time separating my feelings from reason in some topics of an ethical or legal nature, and it took me many arguments to learn how to keep out of a discussion if I don't have a valid point or am prone to becoming frustrated with it.

Based on the lack of intelligent debate that he has put across to support his viewpoint so far, I doubt that he's going to be able to justify his position based on liberal values of freedom of choice, or even on more conservative values in that its morally wrong. He will do what most trolls do when cornered and consistently play the card of "Its my opinion and I'm entitled to it etc" Whilst still continuing to trigger the debate.

I will say really why I am not for gay marriage

1) I feel that a marriage is meant to between a man and a woman. I can't really imagine same sex really being able to produce children on their own. They will always need surrogant mothers to get children.

2) Another reason is that it will not solve the issue of hatred of gay people. In fact, I fear that they will be a major civil war between pro-gay marriage people and anti-gay marriage people and that they will be so much conflict that people will die. I know this because at my school, this issue never has a good debate instead fighting. Their will be more of that if gay marriage is legalized. Believe me, that will be the case.

Conan, thanks again for your respect. I respect you man. Thanks for defending though you disagree with you. Like I said, I am nice to everyone. I will always welcome the gays with me. No problem.

Point one has some reasoning behind it and foceses on man's mission to reproduce, but if everybody married and reproduced that would create huge global problems worldwide.

Point two though is complete and utter nonsense that we are now accustomed to on here and what are you on about with civil wars and people dying if gay marriage is legalized!!!

BTW there is no need to thank one of the mods at the end of your post, in some attempt to justify your trolling, you're actually fooling no one.

OK, you deserve credit here for trying.
The only way of having offspring is by either a surrogate parent or adoption. However, do all marriages have to produce children?
I know a lot of people who don't want children at all, so I don't quite think this works out all the time.
I personally don't buy that for a second.
So far, out of the hundreds of people who post on this forum every day, only a few of us are arguing strongly over this issue. This reflects on a small scale what is true for the whole population: not enough people are concerned enough either way to possibly start something to a scale as great as you suggest. Also, the will of those prepared to defend gay rights far outweighs the hatred in the opposite direction: gay pride marches attract thousands, whilst there are hardly ever any anti-gay protest marches. People who disagree are often happy to just stay out of other people's lives.