This week, the U.S. Senate shot down the Paycheck Fairness Act after not a single Republican — even Republican women — decided to vote yes. This legislation is an update to the 1963 Equal Pay Act, which while a good start, left a lot of things off of the table.

Voting no on this measure was stupid; shooting it down will only hurt our party’s ability to attract women voters and many of the arguments made against it seemed to be based on fear, not on fact.

The first and most popular argument is that it would stop merit based pay. This is a laughably stupid idea that implies that equality between the sexes is the same thing as giving unqualified people money they don’t deserve. I always find this funny, be it Affirmative Action, Employment Non-Discrimination Act or the wage gap, our party seems to always be afraid that some unqualified, lesser people will break this magic ideal of merit. I believe that this fear is based on a wonderful false dichotomy, a black and white view of the world where equality automatically implies incompetence and destruction. The fact that this argument was made by women senators such as Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) shows how internalized misogyny is one hell of a drug. This will only turn people from the party when they see that we only seem to fight for groups that have all the power.

Another argument is that it would tax small businesses and some think this bill would result in excessive litigation that would impose a real burden, particularly on small businesses. This argument assumes that equality somehow conflicts with businesses operating and to an extent, they’re right. Businesses wouldn’t be able to operate like they do now, able to discriminate based on sex. This argument comes up every time there is some fight for equality such as the fight over ENDA, where Speaker of the House John Boehner on Nov. 3, 2013 made the mind bogglingly unintelligent claim that “this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs,” according to the Huffington Post. This argument doesn’t hold up, as a 2013 study done by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity commission shows that equal pay torts represent less than 2 percent of all discrimination based torts.

I can’t understand why our party acts like this, and why every time there is a fight for equality and decreasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots, we choose to be the villain.

If we’re not shooting down ideas to end discrimination, we’re offering pretty bad alternatives like the End Pay Discrimination Through Information Act which was exactly like the PFA except it ripped out parts about women being able to sue for employment discrimination and wanted to cut research and education on workplace discrimination. It seems that the logic behind the official GOP line is that it is inevitable for women to get paid less, and that this is OK.

This logic only hurts us. We’re leaving votes on the table by believing that since discrimination is inevitable that it is OK. As Republicans, we should work to promote a mindset of inclusiveness. We need to stop being the villain in every social issue. A previous column quoted former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) as saying “way too many people believe Republicans are … anti-everything.”  Again, let’s fix that image.

Rami Jackson is a junior entrepreneurship and policy studies major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @IsRamicJ.

Published on September 22, 2014 at 12:03 am