The "What's Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gander..Or Is It?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Singing along with the music in my car.  Love to do it all the time!  And, when I get out of my car I still remember what was playing and at what part the song was interrupted when it begins playing once again.  The entire time I am out of my car I am humming along with the song I was listening to when I turned the car off.  Are you like that?  Do you get a song in your head and can't get it out of your mind until you hear another song?  I ask you this because today I read an article titled "Court dashed girl's quest to sing in all-boys' choir."  I believe my love of music and my humming along to music all the time go back to when I sang in the St. James Episcopal Church Boy's Choir.  I was in the choir from the time I could read until my voice changed from alto to tenor and I had to join the adult choir if I wanted to continue to sing in the church choir.  And, the entire time there was never a girl in the boy's choir.  Perhaps the reason why was due to the fact that the church also had an all-girls' choir.  There were quite a few good looking girls in that choir, but I had to stay in the boys' choir.  The article I read was about a 9-year-old German girl whose parents sued because she wanted to be in the State and Cathedral Choir which is part of Berlin's University of the Arts and is a publicly funded cultural institution and thus should be made available to everyone, regardless of gender.  What was at stake was more than just the right to sing in the boys choir, but to have access to the same music education that males do.  Well, a five-judge panel ruled in favor of the artistic freedom of the choirmaster and did not allow the girl to join the boys choir, but they did allow for an appeal.  The professor of musicology said that boys' voices break around 12 while girls can continue to sing the higher notes until about the age of 15.  If choirs are mixed the girls will have much stronger voices and simply drown out the boys.  The boys' choir of Berlin was founded in 1465 by the ruler of Brandenburg to promote "free musical education for boys."  It wasn't until 1989 that a girls' choir was founded in Cologne, Germany and allowed for the right of girls to receive free musical instruction.  How would you rule?  Years ago I coached the high school rifle team where I taught school.  There was one team and boys or girls could join the team.  My team won the state championship with a lineup of 6 boys and 4 girls.  The fact that there were both girls and boys on the team created a competition among themselves to see who could do the best.  The school also offered baseball and softball in the spring semester.  Boys had to play baseball and girls had to play softball. Today, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania there are a few girls playing football and a few boys playing field hockey since there is only one team of each sport.  Ice hockey also allows both boys and girls to participate on the same team.  As you can see, equal treatment of the sexes is an age old problem and will probably never be completely resolved.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.