A Small Moral Quandary

By Otto Friedrich

"Let's meet for lunch at 1 o'clock at the Millennium Club," the distinguished person said.

"O.K.," the essayist said.

The essayist doesn't much like the Millennium Club and has not been there for quite a while. The club's food is generally overcooked and its atmosphere musty -- all leather armchairs and dark green table lamps and bound sets of people like Bulwer-Lytton. But there are compensations of a sort. It is always faintly possible that one might meet some celebrated old walrus.

But the essayist faced a small dilemma: Is it really socially acceptable to go to lunch at places like the Millennium Club, which practices the weird ritual of barring women from its cobwebbed sanctuary? The club has a token black or two -- nothing racist about the dear old Millennium -- but a spirited faction among its members insists that the admission of women would "alter the character" of the institution. The essayist, who rather prefers the company of women to that of men, agrees. The character of the club would indeed be changed, by being improved. The essayist might even want to join.

Actually, the essayist doesn't see why any self-respecting woman would want to enter a club filled with moss-backed Millenarians, but there is a popular theory that social clubs of this sort represent a kind of secret power center, where the old-boy network twines from armchair to armchair and the old boys negotiate million-dollar contracts between the clam chowder and the eggs Benedict. The essayist doubts that there is much truth in this. It seems like one of those fantasies that the excluded often concoct about the places and people that exclude them. The essayist has been to a reasonable number of clubs, and although he has had pleasant conversations there, he can not recall ever having heard anyone say a very useful word about anything. The clubs, of course, deny that they are places of business; in fact, some even have rules against any piece of paper lying on a table. On the other hand, the mere fact that the clubs deny the women's charges suggests that they may be true after all. In any case, a number of local governments have ordered the clubs to stop discriminating against blacks or women or anybody else. In theory, a private club that gets tax benefits or serves as a place of business has no right to exclude people.

New York City's human rights commission, for example, has filed charges against the University Club, the Union League and the Century Club to force them to admit women. The University Club is fighting in court, and lost its latest appeal in February. The Los Angeles city council is considering a new ordinance that would prohibit any club from barring people on grounds of race, religion or gender.

Around the country, a number of such clubs have politely surrendered -- the Houston Club, for example, and the Detroit Athletic Club -- but others keep maneuvering with all the grace of frightened schoolboys. (Speaking of which, the Princeton University council last month asked New Jersey authorities whether Princeton's last two all-male eating clubs could escape going coed by severing all connections with the university, as several all-male clubs at Harvard have done.) Washington's splendiferous Cosmos Club, which boasts Woodrow Wilson and Oliver Wendell Holmes among its past members, has even tried (unsuccessfully) to require new members to sign a pledge that they will not try to change the club's bylaws, which limit membership to "men of accomplishment." Critics of the Cosmos' policies have formally asked the D.C. alcoholic beverage-control board to cancel the club's liquor license.

It was getting on toward 1 o'clock, and still the essayist, who is given to idly wondering, idly wondered: Is it really acceptable to go to lunch at the Millennium Club? He casually asked a colleague whether he was a member, and the colleague said he had been but had resigned. That seemed very high- toned and impressive, but the essayist is not a member, and it would seem excessive to join an organization solely to resign from it in protest. The colleague then explained that his wife had given him no peace on the subject, and he valued peace. So now would he go to lunch there if another member invited him? Sure. Would he go to lunch at a club that barred blacks? No. "What's the difference?" the essayist inquired. The colleague paused. "I don't know," he said.

These are small things, to be sure, and not a single sick or hungry child will feel better because the Millennium Club opens its doors to women. On the other hand, is life not made up of small things? Lots and lots of small things? And isn't there considerable truth in that old banality of Edmund Burke's about the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil being for good men to do nothing (he presumably meant good people or good individuals, but never mind -- the creation of aphorisms was simpler in Burke's day)?

So down with the Millennium Club and all its partners in crime! Far from having lunch there, let us march against it and wave our banners before its marble portals. Down with all discrimination! Equality for all! We demand justice!

"Wait a minute," said a woman who works down the hall. "I hope you're not going to be one of those people who try to argue that women have to let men into the Colony Club."

"Sure I am," said the essayist, all filled with revolutionary enthusiasm.

"But that's one of the most important discoveries of the women's movement," she said, "that women need to have some place where they can talk about their experiences."

"They can do that with men on the premises too," the essayist said. "I'm for desegregation in all things."

"No, they can't," said the woman who works down the hall.

"As a matter of fact," said the colleague who had resigned from the Millennium Club, "I'm enough of a libertarian to think that as long as a club is really private, it ought to be free to exclude anybody it wants, women or blacks or Greeks or people with red hair or whatever. Let them all start their own clubs."

"Ah, well, I think it is now just about time for lunch," said the essayist, whose revolutionary impulses rarely last very long.

Just a little bit guiltily, he went to lunch at the Millennium Club. The conversation with the distinguished person was very pleasant. He didn't meet anyone else, and no business of any kind was transacted. The bound sets of people like Bulwer-Lytton looked much the same as ever, and the shish kebab was overdone.