Talk:Military officers' club

Closure of officers' clubs
An unregistered user has suggested: ''All rank segregated clubs have been closed primarily due to lack of money. Not just officers clubs. This had nothing to do with civil rights.'' I reverted the edits explained by that comment because they were unsourced, and conflicted with sourced information. I'm not opposed to including that perspective if it can be sourced; but there may be a misunderstanding of the concept of civil rights. The civil rights involved the rights of enlisted personnel in comparison to their officers, rather than differences based on gender, race or ethnicity.

I concur the clubs closed because of a lack of money; but where did that money come from? Let's not confuse building costs with operating costs. Officers' clubs may have originally been built as part of federally-funded military base construction in times of reduced civil rights awareness; but sources I have seen indicate clubs operational costs were funded by the people using those clubs rather than by taxpayers. The officers' clubs closing on historic bases can be attributed to decreased revenue as personnel stopped buying alcoholic drinks. There was a significant cost advantage to drinking at military base clubs because those sales were exempt from state and local taxes including alcohol excise taxes.

Do bases built since the end of the cold war have officers' clubs? If not, it would seem to indicate a lower priority for segregated officer/enlisted recreation. Thewellman (talk) 22:58, 10 April 2019 (UTC)