It's intellectually dishonest because a) you pretend to be soliciting a "debate," but you begin by effectively excluding from consideration the only real alternative to your own (craven, IMO) position; and b) you represent that alternative with an egregious and insulting straw man, essentially portraying anyone who disagrees with you as being in bed with organized crime, scam artists and drug dealers.
IMO, a substantial majority of posters here do not accept the legitimacy of the federal government on this issue. They believe that an activity that has been universally practiced in virtually every human culture for 10,000 years is beyond the proper purview of government. They do not share your impulse to beg inferior people to give them what is already theirs. You do not have to agree with these people, of course, but to smear them as the fellow travelers of criminals and scum while pretending to invite them to a "debate" from which their views have already been excluded seems intellectually dishonest to me.
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I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
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