Service Clubs Not Sure Where Court Ruling on Rotary Will Lead : Men’s and Women’s Groups Ponder Taking In Members of Opposite Sex

“Men only” may be a sign of the past for California Rotarians. But Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing the California service club to admit women left other local men’s--and women’s--groups puzzled over who will belong to their clubs in the future.

“Obviously, the Supreme Court has spoken,” said Frank DiNoto of Newport Beach, president of Kiwanis International, a men-only service club that has voted the last several years to continue excluding women. “It’s the law of the land and I agree with the law of the land.” But he added: “I don’t know if it applies to Kiwanis.”

Founded in 1905, Rotary International is a secular, service organization with more than 1 million members around the world.

Ruling in favor of the Rotary Club of Duarte, dumped by Rotary International for admitting women, the court upheld a state law banning discrimination by any business establishment based on race, sex, religion or national origin.

The court did not question the club’s right to limit members to business leaders, but the Rotarians and “all private clubs that are involved in business activities”--perhaps even the Boy Scouts--must now consider qualified females for membership, according to Marian Johnston, California deputy attorney general.

“The state’s concern is that women have access to the business world,” she said. The ruling applies to all states that have similar discrimination laws; in those states, business-oriented women’s clubs must also consider admitting qualified men, she said.

Kenneth Clark, governor of Rotary District 532, which covers most of Orange County, said he was not surprised by Monday’s Supreme Court ruling. He said that several women have been invited to be Rotary members in Orange County, which has 55 clubs, but that the women have elected to “stand by until the waters have settled.”

Largest, Oldest Club

Rotary is the county’s oldest and largest men’s service club, currently with about 3,500 members. Members join in their mid-20s; some remain until their 90s, Clark said.

The 46-club, 2,000-member Kiwanis contingent in Orange County is not much different from Rotary, said Ben Jansen of Tustin, past president of the North Santa Ana Kiwanis Club. But while Rotary members are required to be business leaders, “we maintain Kiwanis is purely social, no business,” he said.

While nearly half of the Kiwanis members at the last annual convention voted to admit women, 90% of Orange County members would probably oppose the idea, he surmised. “Actually, the men wouldn’t mind at all,” he said. “It is the wives of Kiwanis who object. They wouldn’t like the idea of their husbands socializing and getting more and more familiar with women,” he said.

The topic of women membership is expected to dominate this summer’s Kiwanis convention July 5-8 in Washington. If the Supreme Court ruling indeed sets a national precedent, “we’ll know where we stand . . . what we have to do,” a Kiwanis International spokesman said.

“We expect we will lose a lot of male members if females will have to be allowed,” Jansen said.

Local spokesmen for the Loyal Order of the Moose, a fraternal organization, said they believe that they are a “family organization” and would not be affected since they have women’s auxiliaries.

AAUW Membership Debate

The ruling may also signal a trend for women-only clubs, said Jessica Cabeen, president of the Newport/Costa Mesa branch of the American Assn. of University Women, an educational and cultural organization of college graduates with 17 branches in Orange County. A debate on whether men should be permitted to join the AAUW will take place June 6 at the Balboa Bay Club, she said.

The issue is difficult for many women, she said, because they fear women have not had enough experience in leadership positions. “If men come in, they’ll have a tendency to take over the reins of power.”

On the other hand, the Ebell Club, comprising several of the 42 federated women’s clubs in the county, would take men if they had to, said Ruth Moore, president of the Anaheim Ebell Club. “I never thought about it. . . . I think not very many men would want to cook and roll bandages and do the things we do in our club.”

Monday’s ruling extends a trend begun in 1984 when the Minnesota Jaycees, a young businessmen’s service club which offers leadership training, was forced to admit women, Johnston said.

Nearly a third of the 10,000 California members are now women, and two of four elected statewide vice presidents are women, said Bob Spiegel, 31, president of the California Jaycees and also a member of the Corona Rotary Club.

Handwriting on Wall

The transition for the Jaycees was smooth, he said, partly because membership in the club is limited to those 36 and under. He predicted it would be a “harder adjustment” for Rotarians, whom he described as “a more senior-type age group.”

Most Rotary members saw the handwriting on the wall last year when a state appellate court ordered Rotary International to reinstate the Duarte chapter after dropping it for having admitted three women, said Orange County’s Clark. Other clubs were directed to honor the California ruling. “If a woman Rotarian from California six months ago would attend a makeup meeting in Bangladesh, they would have been instructed to cooperate and coordinate with the female member,” Clark said.

Now the Duarte chapter has 15 women members, he said.

Regarding jealous wives, Clark said: “You get the same thing in the fire department and the police department. It all dies out after a while. I don’t think my wife is too concerned. I think I speak for most of the members in that sense.”

“We think it’s maybe something whose time has come,” said Bill Hill, a Santa Ana realtor who belongs to the Rotary Club of Santa Ana, established in 1920. “A lot of ladies in business want to join. . . . I don’t think there’s any big fat opposition to it.”