A Bad Idea From My State Senator

Tim Corder has introduced S.1323 in the Idaho State Senate. This bill would add "sexual orientation or gender identity" to the existing Idaho Code 67-5909 which prohibits discrimination in employment.

I agree that in the vast majority of jobs it doesn't matter what a person's sexual orientation is. What they do after they get off work is really quite irrelevant. But there are some jobs where I think there are some legitimate questions. For the same reason that most people wouldn't be comfortable having a male gym teacher in the girls' locker room (and most people wouldn't be much more comfortable with a female gym teacher in the boys' locker room), there's a reason not to have homosexual men in the boys' locker room, or lesbian gym teachers in the girls' locker room.

Another problem is that "sexual orientation" doesn't just include homosexuality. It includes pedophilia, necrophilia, and a lot of fetishes that I am not going to mention on my blog. Should a daycare center be allowed to refuse employment to a man known to be a member of the North American Man-Boy Love Association? This bill would make such discrimination unlawful.

What if your employee gets arrested in the Minneapolis airport men's room? The ACLU has already argued that there is a constitutional right to solicit sex there. Would an employer be within his rights to fire a person who was using the company restrooms for that purpose? Or would that just become another basis for a lawsuit?

The "gender identity" clause opens an even larger can of worms. It certainly includes cross-dressers, and people that show up for work some days dressed as a man, and some days dressed as a woman. It will certainly be held to protect gay men who insist on dressing "fabulous." A business that suggests that an employee needs to dress appropriately to the position (meaning, guys shouldn't be wearing feather boas, 5" long eyelashes, and half a pound of eye shadow) is going to get sued for that as well.

I've long been uncomfortable with the extent to which the government interferes in private matters. I can understand and somewhat agree with the arguments for banning discrimination against blacks, since both the federal and state governments, for many decades, either required such discrimination, or actively encouraged it. But there does come a point where you have to say that the government needs to back off. As far as I am concerned, what consenting adults do in private isn't properly the government's business, and it doesn't matter whether that is sex or employment.