Imagine that I, an advocate for traditional marriage, had the power to concede and reconstruct the institution of marriage.

This concession would affect legal measures like Louisiana’s constitution and hundreds of other public policies, which history records as child and family protection. Am I to believe that by allowing this “deconstruction of marriage” to occur, that I would be labeled any differently by my postmodernist friends than I am now?

What a bargain.

In their eyes, I would be spewing bigotry and ignorance, and I would be “bullied” because of my perception of what constitutes marriage and my conviction of where that definition originates, regardless of the legality.

Let’s be clear.

The purpose of same-sex advocacy is to change the way the general public perceives homosexuality and create a society where it is equivalent to heterosexual behavior.

Redefining marriage does not promote equality on behalf of those who wish for it.

Opposition to that claim will charge fairness, equality and progression as grounds for the judicial redefinition of traditional marriage.

In “What is Marriage?” Robert P. George, a professor at Harvard Law School stated, “Why else would they be dissatisfied with civil unions for same-sex couples? Like us, they understand that the state’s favored conception of marriage matters because it affects society’s understanding of that institution.”

In this debate, there are at least two activist factions: traditionalists and revisionists. For the sake of debate, let’s define marriage in the traditional context as a monogamous couple, a man and a woman, participating in a unique union whose byproduct is often offspring. The inability to produce a child in the case of infertility does not harm this definition as some claim.

Preserving the essence of marriage between one man and one woman makes the most sense. Some like to claim that “love” or “commitment” in a relationship should be the determinant. Nature and anatomy, however — or in a theological view, God — have determined two sexes that produce offspring.

The offspring is either male or female, and in traditional marriage there is the biological parent present to guide the child in his or her respective gender role.

The law is also in favor of this view.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which, for the federal government, defines marriage as between one man and one woman. On the state level, it allows states to not recognize any unions outside of their state that are something other than one man and one woman.

Moreover, on the states’ side, 29 states have included in their definition that supports marriage as a union between one man and one woman in their state constitutions, including Louisiana. Eleven others define it as such outside of their constitutions.

A federal amendment to the Constitution has been proposed nearly every Congress since 2002 to support traditional marriage, but has failed to meet the two-thirds majority vote to pass.

The social and economic benefits of traditional marriage are outstanding, but revisionist outcomes will present problems.

“Social and legal characteristics will provide a poor match for the incentive problems that arise in the two distinctly different relationships of gay and lesbian couples. Forcing all three relationships to be covered by the same law will lead to a sub-optimal law for all three types of marriage,” according to the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

The activists took the wrong approach.

Had they vouched harder for pushing civil unions and not the redefining of traditional marriage, they might have more states in alignment with their goals. Instead, they tried to bend the societal norm and perspective of sexuality and relationships, and they presented a poor bargain.

Landon Mills is a 21-year-old international studies senior from Sunshine, La.