Idaho Mountain Express: Adam, Eve and Iowa

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Adam, Eve and Iowa

Under Iowa civil rights law, discrimination against any applicant for employment or any employee because of age, race, creed, color, sex or sexual orientation is illegal. Recently, Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that Iowa law allows an employer to fire an employee because the employer has an “irresistible attraction,” even if the employee has not engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong.

The all-male court opined that a dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant simply because the boss and his wife viewed the woman as a threat to their marriage. The court acknowledged that such a firing might be unfair, but it was not unlawful discrimination because, according to the written opinion, it was based on “emotion” and “feeling” rather than on gender.

Logic this tortured is possible because, like Idaho, the Iowa court has no female voices to read the proposed ruling and respond with a simple, “Huh?”

Would the logic of differentiating between emotion and discrimination have made sense to the justices if this case involved a male employee told that he was being fired because his gay employer or the boss’s gay boyfriend found him too attractive? It is much more likely they would have realized this case is all about gender.

Blaming women because men find them tempting has been a rallying cry since Adam erred in the Garden of Eden. However, in Iowa at least, it’s still all Eve’s fault.
buy cialis
acheter cialis
comprar cialis

About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged: