‘Clubs in a Changing World’
In Los Angeles, I happened to read your editorial (April 30), “Clubs in a Changing World,” and it left me shaking my head.
Men’s clubs and women’s clubs are certainly not every man’s, or every woman’s, cup of tea, and it is also understandable that some people, despite the “live and let live” principle, will hold others’ membership in such clubs against them; and, obviously, many people would like to belong to clubs that, for one reason or another, do not want them as members.
But, to forbid such clubs by law? How such an invasion of privacy can be rationalized by anyone who professes to have respect for individual rights escapes me. Considering the rights that consenting adults of the same sex now possess in California, it seems absurd that associating together in a club should not be one of them.
Obviously, also, the use of taxation to penalize club members would be a gross misuse of the taxing power. Since when does the deductibility of normal business expenses depend on whether the payee meets politicians’ standards for proper conduct? If a lawyer has a party for clients, does he lose the deductibility because the caterer under-withheld payroll tax or discriminated in hiring? Or because the cheese on the pizza came from a Mafia company?
“Other Californians should not be required to subsidize clubs they cannot belong to,” you write. This is absurd. All private property is private. The Times no doubt deducts property taxes on its headquarters building, but that building is not a public facility. Nor are private homes. “Californians should not be required to subsidize residences they cannot enter?”
Based on your reasoning, indeed, private homes should be the next politics-of-envy target. Do all cocktail and dinner parties in private homes pass muster in terms of regional, racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual percentages? Business is discussed in homes, and their owners not only deduct their property taxes but even the expense of business entertaining at home.
If “discriminating” private clubs are to be illegal, or their members subjected to tax penalties, so should “discriminating” private homes.
Perhaps you can take the lead in this logical next step for presumptuous, meddling Big Brotherism. Why don’t you advocate a Hospitality Rights Act, with a corps of enforcement agents to police invitations to people’s homes and force homeowners to conduct their social lives in accord with the Fair Hospitality Standards under penalty of losing the deductibility of their real estate taxes and home business entertaining? (Apartment owners no doubt will have the responsibility of policing their tenants’ entertaining to preserve the deductibility of their taxes.)
Fortunately, there is a Constitution, with provisions for basic individual rights, in this country, and I am sure that these egregious intrusions will, when challenged, be thrown out by the courts. But it is mind-boggling that such nonsense should be seriously advocated.
M. LESTER OSHEA
San Francisco