An Uneasy Time at the Club

For 76 years, the men of the San Marino City Club have discussed local affairs, golfed and played tennis, and didn’t have to deal with outside changes that to some make their all-male group an anachronism.

All it took was one woman speaking up Thursday night after the latest speech in a series of club-sponsored programs to bring the hot-button issues of 1998 to the venerable organization’s door.

When Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren addressed a crowd of men and women--who are admitted to the club’s public events such as this one--he was confronted by a woman who charged that the club is discriminatory.

“That lady last night was the first time ever” that a woman complained publicly about the club, President William P. Barry said Friday.

“I don’t want to join the Junior League, nor do I want to join the San Marino Women’s Club,” Barry said.

But Barry, or any other man, is welcome in the Women’s Club in town, said its president, Janet Webb.

Membership in the San Marino City Club is more restrictive. It is open only to men who live within the boundaries of the San Marino Unified School District and who are sponsored by a current member.

Club members include members of the City Council, the police chief, several business leaders, prosecutors, other attorneys and retired businessmen. The current city manager, a woman, is not a member. Her male predecessor was.

“This isn’t a business club,” Barry said. “It’s social. I like the men. I like being able to talk sports.”

Some women aren’t offended by the fact that they can’t join. “I think it is perfectly OK for men to have men’s clubs and women to have women’s clubs,” said former Mayor Suzanne Crowell. “An awful lot of women here feel the same way.”

But to critics, even if the atmosphere is social, the all-male group is a place where men can network and maintain a monopoly on power.

“Clearly it’s the business and social elite of San Marino, and these venues have traditionally been used to foster business and other relationships,” said Kathy Spillar, national coordinator of the Feminist Majority. “It is absolutely a barrier [to women]. You tend to do business with people you know socially.”

The controversy continued Friday, with residents and a former mayor saying Lungren never should have attended the event. A Lungren spokesman said that the attorney general and presumed Republican gubernatorial nominee supports freedom of association as guaranteed in the Constitution and that the event has been overblown by the press.

Club members remained baffled by the criticism, and Barry said he was unaware of recent court rulings that have led other private associations to open their doors to women.

Cases currently before the California Supreme Court will decide whether organizations like the Boy Scouts can bar gays and atheists from their ranks. A 1995 California Supreme Court case ruled that private clubs that conduct business-like activities--such as charging outsiders to use facilities--cannot discriminate.

“The test for whether you’re a business establishment is a low, low threshold,” said Paul D. Herbert, an attorney who has often defended private clubs. “That explains why many clubs are tending to open their membership up. . . . Other clubs are changing their bylaws because times are changing.”

It doesn’t look like times will change anytime soon in San Marino, where even the club’s most vocal critics say they won’t pursue a court fight.

“I find it profoundly depressing,” said Diane Wittenberg, the president of a company that is a subsidiary of Southern California Edison who says she never received a reply to her application for membership last year. Wittenberg said she had considered suing but just doesn’t have time to deal with a court case.

“Ultimately, the real losers in this are the daughters of all these people,” said Bernard LeSage, a former mayor who quit the club two years ago over its membership policies and criticized Lungren’s visit. “How can they tell their daughters they will achieve anything they desire when they can’t even belong to the club?”

To Barry, the idea that people might even consider challenging his club is bizarre. In his 20 years as a member “it hasn’t changed much. It’s been the same.”

That means meetings in the Huntington Middle School cafeteria where the guys talk sports or chat about their families or occasionally local politics, Barry said. The occasional public event, like Lungren’s visit, and annual parties are open to women and other nonmembers--for a fee.

Lungren spokesman Robert Stutzman said the attorney general has spoken to many women’s groups and, as long as the group is not illegal, he “is not going to be so pretentious as to tell the gentlemen of the club what to do.”

“There’s no harm done,” Stutzman added. “The attorney general got to meet with about 180 citizens of San Marino, both men and women, and the school they met at got the benefits of the proceeds. I think The Times has tried to create a tempest in a teapot.”

Stutzman said the event was not part of the gubernatorial campaign, but a speech on criminal justice issues to concerned citizens.

As the crowd dispersed after the speech, longtime club member Frederick P. Seares said he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Still, he acknowledged, “it’s going to change, realistically.”