A bill aimed at promoting the conscription of female scientists failed to make headway recently as it was deemed discriminatory ‘’based on gender.’’ This information came to light after U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert revealed that several Republicans, him included, had voted against the bill.

Initially the bill, that would have granted the National Science Foundation’s entrepreneurial programs permission to recruit women made it through the House in a 383 – 4 vote. As the afternoon progressed, the representative, Gohmert took center stage, to support his and three other Republicans’ decision to vote against the bill. These members were Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI), Glenn Grothman (R-WI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).

Though the Gohmert admitted that the intent behind the bill was ‘’well intentioned,’’ he argued that, “this program is designed to discriminate against that young, poverty-stricken boy and to encourage the girl. Forget the boy. Encourage the girl.” He went on, “It just seems that, if we are ever going to get to the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., that he spoke just down the Mall, he wanted people to be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin,” the Texan lawmaker chimed. “I know after race has been an issue that needed attention, then gender appropriately got attention.”

It was Gohmert’s point of view that “those things are not supposed to matter.”

“It just seems like, when we come in and we say that it is important that for a while we discriminate, we end up getting behind,” he persisted. “And then probably 25 years from now boys are going to have fallen behind in numbers, and then we are going to need to come in and say: Actually, when we passed that bill forcing encouragement of girls and not encouraging of little boys, we were getting behind the eight ball. We didn’t see that we were going to be leaving little boys in the ditch, and now we need to start doing programs to encourage little boys.”

Gohmert felt, putting the bill through may have set back the Madame Curie’s research, leaving “millions and millions of lives” at risk. Gohmert, Amash and Massie also ganged up against another bill aimed at fostering mentorship programs across science practitioners and female students. The bill however, made it through 380-3.