http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/opinion/18MON3.html
(use 'nyinsult', 'insult' as password)
Good fucking God. Do any of the people reading this site support this sort of bullshit? As far as I can understand, Augusta National is a golfing FRATERNITY. The point of the damn thing is for men to be able to hang out and play golf with each other, or with women, if they invite them.
The Supreme Court allows for freedom of association (and non-association) as a right, came up in National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, which was a 1958 case, I think. Discrimination as an illegal practice comes into play when freedom of association begins to do an unreasonable amount of damage to a society. And, understand that what qualifies as an 'unreasonable' amount of damage is pretty high - the Boy Scouts are a huge, national, important organization, and they're still legally allowed to disinclude gay scoutmasters.
Obviously, not allowing women into Augusta is not going to do an unreasonable amount of damage to society. Neither will not allowing women into some college Frat, or not allowing men into the National Order of Women or what have you.
This whole thing really doesn't make a difference - it'd be hardly worth talking about, if not for three issues: 1.) the frame of mind necessary to think that this sort of blackmail is a constructive or positive way of getting things done could very well do an unreasonable amount of damage to society, 2.) feminism has done positive things - and a movement wasting its time on this sort of stuff will end up invalidating itself as a whole.
3rd, if people keep paying attention to Martha Burk, this organization, then what's going to happen in the end is that the Masters is going to be taken off of television, and Augusta National will just close up and continue doing its own thing. The Masters is one of the purest, and one of the best sports tournaments on television, and I'm not looking forward to having it taken off the air because of this bullshit.
Anyways, if anyone actually agrees with what Burk is doing, please respond - I hardly even know how to argue about it, given how foreign, alien the other viewpoint seems to be to me.
Stone