There's no such debate at all, whoever told you that is not a linguist.
Linguistics is a science and it is inherently descriptive. It describes what it sees in natural language. It doesn't make judgment as to the worthiness or corectness of something. That's what laymen do, but they cannot reinforce their views through linguistics, only through distortion of linguistics.
One might go so far as to say that, because linguistics is a science, it is therefore descriptive.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwischenstaatliche_Kommission_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_German_Orthography
That may be, but such behavior contradicts their supposed status as scientists, i.e. dispassionate observers of nature. Imagine a scientist in the Australian outback, yelling at a Platypus, "You're doing it all wrong!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus
> The idea to pass laws to change spelling may appear somewhat strange to others, though ...
One might as well try to stop evolution in its tracks.