My wife and I have a disagreement and it should be an easy one to adjudicate.

With some objectives there is an option for the owner to damage his/her own objective for some sort of gain. If the owner destroys his/her own objective, does the benefit of that objective's destruction go to the opposing player?

Yes it does

Thanks, mister!

I was actually going to ask this same question. It was my thinking that the Light Side has to destroy 3 objectives but if you destroy your own objective how can that be the Light Side destroying it? I understand it could give the Dark Side an edge because if you got 4 damage on one of your own objectives and then destroyed it before the Light Side could finish it off you could essentially save yourself for at least another turn. Is this the reason behind the ruling? Thanks

If DS destroys their own objective it still counts as one of the three LS needs. It doesn't save yourself at all.

I was actually going to ask this same question. It was my thinking that the Light Side has to destroy 3 objectives but if you destroy your own objective how can that be the Light Side destroying it?

The Light Sight win condition isn't "destroy 3 DS objectives" but "Have 3 DS objectives in your Victory Pile" which is a subtle but noticeable difference.

The rules also say that when an objective gets destroyed, it goes to the opponent's victory pile. No details on how this objective is destroyed.

I guess that this would indeed be to prevent "sacrificing" an objective that has too much damage already to avoid defeat. Additionally, this also makes using the "damage this objective" capacities a risky trade-off, preventing wanton use of these quite powerful capacities.

On a similar but not completely relevant note, certain Reactions can activate regardless of who's Objective just left play, like Emperor Palatine and Red Two.

If you are looking for a reference, take a look at the rulebook, pg 15. It states that the "LS player wins the game immediately when one of the following occurs: 1) Three or more DS objective cards are destroyed OR 2) the DS player must draw a card from his command or objective deck, but that deck is empty."

Notice there is no verbiage as to how the "DS objective cards are destroyed," merely that they are destroyed.