Augusta National Golf Club has the legal right to define their
membership policies however they see fit. Unfortunately, in
excluding women, they are using this right in a manner that is
morally wrong.
Granting one group preference over another in any form seems
intuitively incorrect, especially when it is openly admitted that
the only grounds for it is something as arbitrary as sex. The issue
in itself is petty: it wouldn’t harm men to let women play on
the same golf course.
But given that sex-based segregation is readily accepted ““
and in many cases encouraged ““ in various other private
institutions, it would be logically inconsistent to deny the same
legal right to Augusta National in this case.
For example, Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia
University in New York City, does not admit men. It “aims to
provide the highest quality liberal arts education to promising and
high-achieving young women,” according to its mission
statement. This certainly results in a sexist admission policy, but
it is the legal right of administrators, trustees, and the like to
determine the goals and policies of their own institution.
And if the American public is prepared to guarantee
Barnard’s right to determine its own admission policies
instead of male students’ universal access to education, it
seems contradictory to deny the same right to Augusta National over
women’s desire to play golf on their greens.
Indeed, the entire controversy over whether women are allowed
membership to Augusta National trivializes the decades of civil
rights activism it draws on as its base for support. Past
generations fought for womens’ suffrage or to end racial
segregation in public schools; this one is arguing over whether a
group of predominantly rich men should be allowed to ban a group of
predominantly rich women from their weekend golf outings.
The real shame here is more important issues of social
inequality are being ignored while all of this media attention is
focused on Augusta. Women of color, for instance, hold only 1.6
percent of corporate officer positions at the 429 Fortune 500
companies who report such data. Moreover, women currently hold only
13 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate.
Since legal avenues to resolve the issue are not available,
advocates who are in favor of Augusta admitting women should use
social and economic pressure to make club members listen. If they
do not support the club’s decisions, they should boycott the
Master’s tournament to be held there in 2003 and campaign for
television viewers not to tune in. Leaders in the golf community
who have voiced similar sentiments, most notably Tiger Woods,
should back their words up by refusing to play at the course.
The Boy Scouts are permitted to exclude gays and atheists. Wrong
as this policy may be, it is vital to the American ideals of free
speech and a right to privacy that they be constitutionally
protected so other institutions with more noble ambitions ““
like private colleges that still use affirmative action regardless
of legislation in some states banning it in public institutions
““ can pursue whatever policies they see fit. Legally forcing
Augusta to admit women would set a dangerous precedent for impeding
on private institutions’ independence from the state.
Individuals, though, have as much right to protest the policies
of private institutions as the institutions do to make them. To
change Augusta’s membership policies is to change the minds
of its male members ““ and this is most effectively done in
the court of public opinion.