Martha Burk, National Council of Women's Organizations
Posted on 09/03/2002 12:46:50 PM PDT by jern
Tuesday, September 3, 2002 Burk says players 'need to take a moral stand'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ESPN.com news services
The fight between the Augusta National Golf Club and Martha Burk, the chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO), grew even a bit more testy on Tuesday.
Appearing on the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio, Burk said that her organization will begin targeting PGA Tour players in a bid to force Augusta National to allow women members.
The players "need to take a moral stand," Burk told Patrick.
"I think Augusta will eventually see that it will be in the best interests of their club ... to do the right thing and allow women members," she later said in the interview.
Through a club spokesman, Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson issued a written response to Burk. It said:
"1. This is not a legal issue. The Masters has a constitutional right to its private membership.
"2. Martha Burk tries to equate this to the Shoal Creek racial issue in 1990, but they are totally different. In America, there are women's colleges, the Girl Scouts of America and women's health clubs throughout the country. In Canada and overseas, there are women-only golf clubs.
"3. The Club possibly will have a woman member in the future, but it should be the Club's decision, not the decision of an outside group that knows little about the Club or Tournament. In Ms. Burk's initial letter, she placed a deadline on the Club to have a woman member (2003), and discussed the sponsors of the Tournament.
"4. The winner in this sponsorship issue is the viewer. There will now be 12 ½ hours of commercial free golf coverage.
"5. What is presently happening is a corporate campaign. The National Council of Women's Organizations is targeting anyone associated with the Masters.
"6. The reason we chose not to ask the sponsors to participate in 2003 was to spare them the inevitability of a continued corporate campaign that could have included protests and boycotts.
"7. Dr. Burk is now telling individuals what to watch on television. In three online polls conducted this weekend, nearly 90 percent of respondents said they would continue to watch the Masters on CBS. Over 4.3 million women watched the Masters last year.
"8. The Masters and Augusta National are different. One is a private club, and the other is a world-class sporting event that is completely inclusive.
"9. The Masters is being used as a symbol. Several other Clubs do not allow women to play or even to enter the grounds. Women play at Augusta National regularly, and there are no restrictions on tee times. Women played over 1,000 rounds at the Club last year."
Last week, Burk said that she will talk with CBS about its televising of The Masters, which will be commercial-free next year. Johnson announced that The Masters will drop its sponsors -- IBM, Coca-Cola and Citigroup -- to shield them from any controversy over the club's all-male membership.
Augusta National has not had a woman member in its 69-year history. It has had black members since 1990.
Okay, there was the guy that sued to be a Hooters.....thing.
Are my views too narrow?
Am I the only one that thinks a little segregation is harmless? I don't mean like the public school systems or the like.
All male colleges, clubs, organizations....fine
All female colleges clubs, organizations....fine
All black colleges clubs, organizations....fine
All hispanic female truckdriver photographers that like cheese colleges, clubs, organizations...fine
SO WHAT!!!
All white male club...QUICK, TO THE ACLU HOTLINE.
Women, including and especially these NAGS that are going after Augusta have made men's lives living hell for the past 30 years. Let the boys be boys without the whining, bitching women yanking on their sleeves.
They're actually threatening to do more than that. They've also threatened to talk to the member's employers to "convince" their employees to change the club's policy. I hope you agree that that is going too far.
"Dog food!" Shot of chef picking up cleaver and being restrained by other kitchen staff.
Scene from the immortal "Caddyshack".
My/Your/Our opinion does not matter as I doubt any of us FReepers are members of Augusta National.
Because members have some influence over policies set by the group and guests don't. I'm a member of a Catholic Homeschooling group. To be a member you have to be Catholic, but we welcome non-Catholics to join our activities. The only restriction is that they have "guest" status and not member status. Only members can vote on policy and hold office. This is important because it ensures that our group will always retain its Catholic identity.
Not being a member of Augusta (darn!) I don't know how they see their group and its identity. It's already been posted that membership is by invitation only and it can also be revoked at any moment. Consider it a free association of the members. It's possible that at some point the members will see a woman whom they think will be a valuable addition to Augusta, but it doesn't seem that they're interested in any token members.
Beyond all that, face it, men and women are different. My wife has a "girls group" that she spends time with every month. I never thought of this as anything unnatural. In fact it seems the most natural thing in the world.
As a young lawyer, I once represented a private club for ladies in a large East Coast City in a zoning/licensing matter. The Club Manager and I left a hearing around noontime, and she invited me to have lunch with her at the club so that we could discuss what had occurred that morning. As we walked to the club, she suddenly remembered this was "ladies only" day in their dining room. This was one of the days on which the symphony orchestra gave its matinee concert, and on those days the club reserved its dining room for ladies coming in for the concert.
Years later, I had the privilege of playing golf at Royal Troon, one of the courses on which the British Open is regularly played. It is men only, though the club's other course, Troon Portland, allows women to play. Since I and my playing companions had our wives with us on this golfing trip, we played Portland with them in the morning, had lunch with them in the one dining room at the club that permitted women, and sent them off to an afternoon of shopping while we played Royal Troon. It proved to be an expensive round of golf when you factored in the cost of their shopping, and it still occasions some "good natured" needling from our wives, but nobody felt a need to make a scene or go to war over it.
Years later, on another trip, we played Royal Aberdeen in Scotland. This is a bear of a golf course with long carries from the tee boxes over heather and gorse to reach the fairways. In a brisk wind which seemed always to be blowing against us (how do golf course designers do that?), we all were struggling, and our wives were dying, because the ladies' tees were often only ten or so yards shorter than the men's tees. After the round, we asked one of the members what their wives thought of the course. His response was that only a handful of very good women golfers ever played it "and we like it that way." The ladies had their own course down the road, and that is where nearly all of their wives chose to play.
The moral? There are rational and irrational reasons for men and women to associate with their own. When they do so in a private club, that is their right. Since I doubt Ms. Whats-her-face will ever understand this, maybe we should just take up a collection and send her shopping during the Masters?
Guests of members are most likely restricted to certain times and days of the week. Also, there are probably areas of the clubhouse where female guests are not allowed, such as the bar & grill area. So, even though female guests of members are "allowed," that does not mean that they enjoy the same priviledges.
It's a men's club, pure and simple. Those who accept the invitation to join do so for the right to freely associate with other men in a men's club atmosphere. Is there something inheritantly wrong with that? Why does it necessarily have to be a BAD thing, like misogyny?
This issue also has everything to do with liberty. If one person is forced to associate with another — no matter how supposedly lofty the goal — that is not liberty. Forced association can be characterized in many ways, but free would not be one of them. I can understand the argument in cases where tax dollars are used, but Augusta is a private club.
Augusta, as a PRIVATE OGRANIZATION has the constitutional right to freedom of association. They are free to allow who they want as a member and to deny membership to those they do not want. I am a man, and I have as much a chance of being a member at Augusta as does Ms. Burke.
Why do you think that Augusta should be required to allow women as members?
And when will the female only health clubs be required to allow male members?
Read post #90.
You have hit the nail on the head. Good comments. At our club, there are separate "men's" and "ladies'" golf days. The women INSIST on having the course closed to men at precisely noon, which is the same time the course is closed to women on men's day. Unfortunately for the club manager, ladies' day is a gigantic money loser. The women leave no tips, two women share one soda and stand at the bar counting their change to "split" it, and on and on. It's a disaster, but the women insist on "equal rights," even though they get barely half of the number of players on their day. This is typical of women getting involved in golf clubs.
Women often complain that they can't get in, and then when they do get it they complain about what goes on in there.
Men are thinking, "why are women so obsessed with what we are thinking?"
Women will do anything to get into our clubs, only to find out that we talk fishing, sports, our swing, and that hot Blonde behind the counter. And why are women so obsessed with what we think.
So we get away.
Martha Burk, National Council of Women's Organizations
you are, evidently, not listening ...
I think you should move your couch to the opposite wall.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.