By Christopher Hitchens
During my very first visit to New York City, in the summer of 1970, there was a big flap about McSorley's Old Ale House, one of downtown's most venerable bars, and its "men only" policy. Feminism viewed the matter in the light of the Civil Rights movement, the flame of which was still glowing brightly. The McSorley boys defended themselves on the rather unheroic basis that they didn't have a ladies' room. When I thought about this cause celebre at all, I decided that I had no interest in going to a bar where there was no chance of meeting the opposite sex.
Now, Mayor Bloomberg has decreed that no bar in his city can hang out so much as a shingle saying "smokers welcome." And so the years of New York Bohemia appear to have come to an end. Someone else always knows what's good for us.
The dispute over Hootie Johnson and the Augusta golf club falls somewhere between the two apparent "goods" of "nondiscrimination" on the one hand, and "diversity" on the other. Many people unreflectingly think the "antidiscrimination" ethic is the same as the "diversity" one, which is why Tiger Woods' name has been dragged into the row. However, diversity is a matter of "choice" by definition. And you can't make a choice, again by definition, if you can't be discriminating.
Racism was not a matter of "separate but equal." It was a matter of "separate but unequal" or, to be blunt, of "separate but suppressed." In the lousy old days, Mr. Woods would have been prevented from walking on a fairway at all unless (like the staff at Bill Clinton's all-white club in Arkansas) he was a caddie. There is quite obviously no equivalent danger here. Women can play golf if they want and they can -- again unlike black citizens in the old South -- set up all-female clubs if they like. There are plenty of golf courses. No one is being prevented from playing.
I play fairly seldom and don't follow sports as a rule, but it does seem to me that golf is a man's game. Not a man's game in the way that field hockey is a women's game, but still. It's certainly one of the games where men and women compete only with their own genders. (Exclusion from one club or even one event therefore does not prohibit women from competing at the highest level.) Thus, if there was a law saying that no women could join any golf clubs in Georgia, I would be fiercely opposed to it. If there was a law saying that all golf clubs in Georgia had to be either all male or all female, I would think it rather ridiculous. But if there is a state of affairs where the odd club is for men only, we are doing no more than observing an ancient rule -- which most women understand and even sigh with relief about -- that every once in a while the boys will gather for poker or martinis and not invite their wives. (The husband-and-mistress-only club will have to wait ... )
A big and various country containing millions of grown-ups not only should but must be prepared for the shock of "diversity" to mean "diverse." This is a case where the feminist movement should be even more pro-choice than it already is.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of Liberal Studies at the New School University in New York. His most recent book is Why Orwell Matters.