"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.