Madam, – It seems from your reports that the Supreme Court has upheld Portmarnock Golf Club’s rule restricting membership to “gentlemen”.
Does this mean that the club may turn down male candidates on the grounds that they are not gentlemen? What defines gentility? Is it education, wealth, occupation, clothing, accent or the non-use of coarse language, at least in mixed company? Once they are in, are there periodic tests to ensure that the gentlemen, as they get older and wiser, have not outgrown their rather juvenile aversion to women?
If women were ever let in as full members, the club’s wish for male privacy could be satisfied by having a “men-only” bar, in the same way as it has (I suppose) men-only changing rooms and showers. It would then of course want, for equality’s sake, to provide a women-only bar along with an unsegregated one for those who enjoy a more civilised mode of socialising. – Yours, etc,