Gay Partners: Out Of Bounds In Atlanta

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The gatekeepers of Georgia's private golf clubs seem to be hitting nothing but bogeys these days. First there were the troubles at Augusta National, home of the Masters tournament, where chairman Hootie Johnson gave a bulldog's performance to keep a woman from joining his all-male club last year. Now another exclusive Peach State club, Atlanta's Druid Hills Golf Club, is facing pressure on the gay-rights front in a dispute that has pitted the city's country-club elite against the Atlanta political establishment.

Club member Lee Kyser, 56, says she doesn't have a "gay agenda." Rather, the psychologist maintains, she just wants her same-sex partner to be able to take their adopted twins, age 2, to swimming lessons as a spouse, enjoying the same privileges accorded all members' spouses. Another gay club member, Randy New, 49, wants spousal status for his partner too. The club is fighting them, arguing that if it grants those rights it would have to provide them to unmarried heterosexual couples as well, which it won't do. The city has vowed to enforce an ordinance passed in 2000 requiring that an institution with at least 50 members provide same-sex benefits if it rents the space out for public functions, as Druid Hills does. A group of Republican state legislators plan to introduce a bill this week that would protect the club against the city's ordinance, on the premise that state law sanctions marriage only between a man and a woman.