Why single out Tiger? As a black man, the argument runs, he should feel the sting of discrimination more than most. He has a special responsibility, therefore, to carry the fight against Augusta's men-only policy. After all, discrimination is discrimination.

The Times' campaign has provoked two kinds of response. One, that Augusta is a private club, and has every right to decide for itself who it will admit. Freedom of association, as my sometime colleague Lorne Gunter recently wrote, includes the freedom not to associate. And two, that Tiger is a golfer, not a philosopher, and is not obliged to take public stands on moral or political issues. Neither of these arguments seems to me to be adequate.

In the first place, no one that I am aware of has suggested that Augusta should be legally prevented from banning women. The issue is rather the morality of the policy, and whether those associated with the club or its marquee tournament -- members, broadcasters, advertisers, and yes, players -- are tacitly endorsing it.

Anyway, "freedom of association" only takes us so far. Corporations are private organizations, too, and could plausibly argue that freedom of association, not to say freedom of contract, should permit them to discriminate against women, blacks and others if they choose.

Neither is it sufficient to say that Tiger's just a golfer. If Augusta refused to accept blacks as members, as indeed it used to do, we would hardly expect him to keep quiet about it.

Actually, I don't have a problem with Augusta refusing to admit women. It wouldn't be my preference, but I don't regard it as a mortal sin. And while others may disagree, I don't think Tiger has any special responsibility to be their spokesman. But I base my position on different grounds: in brief, that "discrimination is not discrimination." I'll be plain. I say it is different, and worse, for Augusta National to discriminate against blacks than against women. I say this not because one form of discrimination is less deplorable than the other, in general, but because every individual case of discrimination is different from every other. It's complicated, and often our moral intuition is at odds with our stated principles.

Not every kind of discrimination is wrong, for starters. Discrimination against the incompetent, the corrupt and the lazy remains a bedrock, not only of our economic system, but our moral universe. On the other hand, discrimination against the stupid, which did not used to trouble us, is more problematic today: At what point does "thick as two planks" cross over into "suffers from a learning disability"?

Second, even forms of discrimination that are blameworthy in principle are not always in practice. It is wrong, we all agree, to discriminate on the basis of skin colour. Yet when it comes to choosing a mate, virtually everyone does. Sexual attraction, indeed, remains ungoverned by any concept of equal rights: You are permitted to discriminate on any basis you please. Don't like big noses, hairy backs, short men? That is your business, you shallow lookist.

The more private the sphere, we might generalize, the more tolerable discrimination becomes; and the more public, the less so. No one is going to ask too many questions about whom you rented your spare bedroom to. Not so the owner of a hotel or apartment block. Or an employer, for that matter. For there we are more nearly in the public square.

What about freedom of association, then? Some libertarians think anti-discrimination laws should be abolished. But even among those broadly sympathetic to freedom of contract, the argument finds little support. Why does our moral intuition rebel against it?

Think of it as an issue of restraint of trade. If it were only one business that preferred not to hire blacks, that would be one thing, just as if one company decides to raise prices on its own. But where a number of businesses in the same community share in the same bigotry, the applicant faces a kind of cartel.

But private clubs are not the same as commercial enterprises, and joining a golf course is not so material to one's existence as getting a job, and -- to come back to the point -- sex is not the same as race. While women have faced discrimination, and do, in ways that are no less odious than that practised against blacks -- in the vote, in employment -- it does not follow that every form of discrimination ought to be treated in exactly the same way.

That is what Mencken called "a foolish consistency." The differences between men and women are more profound than those between blacks and whites. The relationship between them is likewise of an entirely different kind To state the obvious, the races do not pair off and spend the rest of their lives together. That either men or women should wish to spend some time apart from each other is, if not commendable, at least understandable. Or if not, then someone will have to break it to the members of the Toronto Ladies Golf Club.