Golf club doesn’t ban women... it limits membership to men

GROUCHO MARX once famously said he didn’t want to be part of a club that would accept him as a member, but had he been a woman in Portmarnock the smile might have been on the other side of his face.

In Portmarnock Golf Club’s rule book there “ain’t no such thing as a sanity clause” but there may be a discriminatory sand trap. The club argues its charter does not exclude women but membership is limited to men.

The question of private golf clubs and discrimination is enough to test the mettle of most legal experts, but when you throw gay rugby clubs into the mix, well, the legal conundrum falls far short of a birdie.

If all concord’s born of contraries, the five Supreme Court judges should be on the back nine in no time at all in the case brought by the Equality Authority.

The court yesterday reserved judgment on preliminary issues in the authority’s appeal against a 2005 High Court decision that Portmarnock Golf Club was not a “discriminating” club under the Equality Act.

The sides agree the club is discriminating in the colloquial sense as it limits membership to “gentlemen”. The legal dispute is whether it is a discriminating club under the act.

In exchanges yesterday between Frank Callanan SC and the court, the judges voiced difficulty that arguments by the authority suggested, for example, a gay men’s club would not be discriminatory while a gay rugby club would be, as its principal activity was athletic and not just association.

For the present, Portmarnock will never disregard a membership application, but in the case of women is prepared to make the exception.