Pay gap has strong defender

In a letter criticizing a bill that addresses the gender pay gap in the workforce, a Utah Republican said that men have traditionally earned more than women and, citing “simple economics,” argued that the situation should stay that way.

James Green’s letter to the editor, published in two local publications last week, prompted such outrage that within two days, Green had written an apology and resigned from his post as vice chair of the Wasatch County Republican Party.

Green said in his letter, published Wednesday by the Park Record and the Wasatch Wave, that men make more than women because they’re “the primary breadwinners” of their families, and paying women equally would ruin the makeup of a traditional family where “the Mother” remains at home raising children.

“If businesses are forced to pay women the same as male earnings, that means they will have to reduce the pay for the men they employ, simple economics,” Green wrote. “If that happens, then men will have an even more difficult time earning enough to support their families, which will mean more Mothers will be forced to leave the home (where they may prefer to be) to join the workforce to make up the difference.”

And having more women in the workforce would create competition for jobs, “even men’s jobs,” Green wrote. That will, in turn, lower the pay for all jobs and force “more and more Mothers” into the workforce, he argued.