By the time this column appears many readers will have already learned of the mini-saga involving the public pool on Bedford Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn which has been the subject of opinion pieces in many different media venues.
What has brought so much attention is a June 1 editorial in the New York Times addressing a terrible horrible no-good near-crime set to take place in Williamsburg this summer: Four times a week for a total of six hours a municipal swimming pool there will be open to women only. This the Times inveighs will cause the
taxpayer-owned-and-operated Metropolitan Recreation Center… [to become] temporarily unmoored from the laws of New York City and the Constitution and commonly held principles of fairness and equal access… [and to] instead answer to the religious convictions of one neighborhood group.
Much of the commentary on the case thus far has focused on the hypocrisy of the Times in raising this issue. Jonathan Tobin in Commentary and Seth Lipsky in the New York Sun for example have pointed out that “as recently as February the Times rhapsodized in a news story about how Toronto had transformed a ‘neighborhood of despair’ into a ‘model of inclusion’ [by offering] women-only swim sessions” at a local public pool in accommodation of Muslim residents. Likewise Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg observes that when the “Times itself reported on the controversy over Harvard’s separate gym hours for Muslim women in 2008 the editorial board did not weigh in to denounce the adoption of the practice by America’s most prestigious university.”
