The hallowed halls of legal education are no place for ideas of individual responsibility, nor are they the place to question "forward thinking" socialist agendas. Case in point:

During a recent discussion with a group of female law students on the issue of discrimination, one of the women related an experience she had while working for a law firm in California. The law student is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) and the majority of the lawyers at the law firm she was working at are too. In the Mormon community, it is generally accepted that women will get married in their early twenties and become stay-at-home mothers, while the men will be the “bread winners” of the family. While there are those that do not follow this pattern, the vast majority of Mormons do, placing most other concerns second.

The law student said that near the end of the summer she was told that the firm would like to extend an offer of employment to her. However, since she was an unmarried Mormon woman, they were going to hold their offer until graduation in April. The rationale was that they feared that she might accept the offer but later get married and move to New York or somewhere else with her new husband, leaving the firm high and dry. The law student presented this as an example of sex discrimination and berated the law firm for this “unethical” practice.

I am in favor of equity between the sexes; that people should be treated fairly, regardless of their gender… but not regardless of all the ramifications of gender. It is a sad commentary on our society that a business cannot make decisions based on objective, observable and measurable trends simply because the trend is unique to a particular sex. The fact of the matter is that Mormon women tend to abandon careers when the prospect of family enters the picture. Another student who was present explained that every Salt Lake City firm she had spoken with said that the previous five women to work for the firm left to have and raise children.

Granted, not all Mormon women do this. However, most do. Sure it hurts the women that wouldn’t do such things, but what is a company to rely on: your word or objective, observable and measurable trends?

With this trend being so widespread in the Mormon community, is it really that unseemly for a business to make decisions based on their personal experiences? How can a business protect itself from the negative consequences of hiring Mormon women if it does not exercise some degree of caution in its hiring process? I am not saying that the law firm’s actions should be the end of the discussion. As any good lawyer knows, the “final word” is just the first step in the negotiation process.

We are so eager to make sure that everything is “equal” and “fair” that we lose sight of people’s Liberty. You can disagree with the law firm’s actions, but don’t they have the right to be wrong? If they don’t, how is this any different than Orwellian thought crimes?

When will people realize that changing society through legislation and litigation instead of through open discourse and respecting the Liberty of our fellow citizens can only lead to our destruction as a people?