by Phil Kent, SLF President

As appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 11, 2003

Feminist harpy Martha Burk has declared that Augusta National Golf Club's all-male membership is somehow an "affront" to women serving in the U.S. armed forces. "It's appalling that the women who are willing to lay down their lives for democratic ideals should be shut out of this club," she says. "Democratic ideals do not include discrimination."

Burk and fellow national protester Jesse Jackson coordinated with fellow travelers in the U.S. House of Representatives (including Reps. John Lewis and Richard Gephardt) to introduce a foolish bill calling on lawmakers, federal judges and justices, political appointees in the executive branch and the president and vice president not join any private clubs that "discriminate" on the basis of gender or race.

This is the same old liberal party line that always underscores victimhood. The phony "victims" in this case are women who can't join one of the world's most exclusive all-male private clubs.

I know firsthand that Augusta National doesn't discriminate against women any more than the Girl Scouts, college sororities, all-female colleges or the Junior League discriminate against men and boys. While working as a journalist at The Augusta Chronicle for more than two decades, I became acquainted with many Augusta National members and have seen them, their wives and their female guests playing the famed course.

All National Chairman W.W. "Hootie" Johnson has been doing, after he was attacked last year by the publicity-seeking Burk, is defending the National's associational rights in the court of public opinion. In 2000, in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of the Boy Scouts of America to choose its members.

Burk wants to demonize the National's band of brothers. She doesn't want the general public to know that women play more than 1,000 rounds of golf a year on National's beautiful fairways. She ignores that the National first proposed that women's golf be made a gold medal event and offered to host the first gold medal round for the 1996 Olympics. Nor does she acknowledge that the National spends millions of dollars promoting golf to disadvantaged children (including many girls) through the First Tee program.

The majority of the women Burk claims to represent under the umbrella of her National Council of Women's Organizations are not familiar with her radical views. For example, Burk has written, "The problem of unwanted pregnancy is largely one of uncontrolled sperm." In a 1997 Ms. Magazine article, she actually recommends the mandatory surgical implementation of contraceptive devices in every boy at the age of puberty. She goes on to say:

"Controlling men's fertility would not be a hard restriction to enforce. The fertility authorities could use a combination of punishments for men who failed to get the implants and for doctors who removed them without prior authorization. The men could be required to adopt one orphan per infraction and rear her or him until adulthood. The doctors could lose their licenses or, in extreme cases, go to prison."

Fertility authorities? A male one-orphan rule? Do these mesh with her oft-proclaimed "democratic ideals?"

Of course, the National has the cherished American right of free association on its side. Burk and Jackson only have The New York Times and other one-sided liberal print and TV media cheerleaders in their corner.

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