ATLANTA (AP) – The city of Atlanta thought it had the toughest local gay-rights laws in the country. Then a gray-haired golf player asked for the city’s help in getting her country club to extend spousal benefits to her partner.

A furor erupted, with the club refusing to obey a city requirement that any couple registered as domestic partners with the city be treated as married people. Lawsuits are being threatened. Some of Atlanta’s poshest neighborhoods are bitterly divided. Now gay rights activists and even the mayor are wondering if the ordinance is even enforceable.

The 57-year-old golf player, psychologist Lee Kyser, grew up loving country clubs. She remembers girlhood tennis lessons at Augusta Country Club, next to the famed greens of Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Golf Tournament. When she moved to Atlanta and heard about the super-exclusive Druid Hills Golf Club, she was eager to join. A $40,000 initiation fee later, Kyser was in. But not her partner.

Druid Hills, its stacked-stone facade nestled in rolling hills near Emory University, fancies itself as a progressive country club, Kyser said. The membership committee knew she was gay. They hinted that it wouldn’t be long before her partner, attorney Lawrie Demorest, would be treated the same as any spouse, and allowed to visit without Kyser present and to entertain business clients there.

A few years went by. Kyser paid her monthly dues, which ran over $400. She was hesitant to take up the club’s offer of allowing Demorest to join – only after paying another initiation fee and her own monthly dues. The couple didn’t see why they should shell out thousands of dollars a year when married couples got a two-for-one deal.

Kyser asked again for spousal benefits after the couple had twin daughters.

“They were very gracious and this-and-that, although they did pose some pretty ridiculous questions,” Kyser said. “They were basically questions like, ‘I mean, are you going to come to the dances?’ Things like that.”

By 2000, the club’s board decided Demorest, and other known partners of gay members, should be treated as guests, not spouses. Kyser felt misled, and sad for her little girls, who couldn’t go to the pool with Demorest unless Kyser came along.

A couple years later, Kyser heard about a local ordinance passed in 2000 that required any club doing business with a city – that is, any club wanting a business license or liquor license – to abide by the city policy of extending spousal benefits to registered domestic partners.

Kyser and another gay Druid Hills member, Randy New, filed complaints with the Atlanta Human Relations Committee, which was charged with helping enforce city anti-discrimination ordinances. New and Kyser wanted city officials to yank Druid Hills’ licenses if it didn’t agree to include gays and lesbians in its spousal benefits. The committee unanimously agreed, voting 5-0 in 2003 that the club was breaking the law.

“It was clear to us there appeared to be discrimination taking place,” recalled Stephen Brodie, the committee chair. So the committee wrote a letter to the mayor that they thought Druid Hills violated the ordinance.

Mayor Shirley Franklin never responded to the letter. She did tell the golf club it should change its policy, but club attorneys replied that the ordinance was probably unconstitutional and that they were free to ban unmarried partners from spousal benefits if they wished.

Club executives, who declined interview requests for this article, waited to see whether Franklin would move to pull its licenses. So far, she hasn’t.

“It’s in the mayor’s court,” said Druid Hills manager Randy Delaney, explaining there would be no comment from board members until the mayor decided what to do.

So far, that’s been nothing. Franklin also declined interview requests, but in a speech last month to a gay business group, she said the ordinance may be unenforceable and that she was “stuck” on the Druid Hills matter.

“To me, she’s playing a game, and the game is to stall,” said New, the gay Druid Hills member.

Franklin’s inaction was cheered by private clubs. At least one more golf club in town has rewritten its policy to ban spousal benefits for unmarried people. But gay activists are fuming, saying the ordinance is worthless if Franklin is afraid to enforce it.

“She’s trying to ride a political fence. She’s just hoping that by ignoring this it will eventually go away,” said Chuck Bowen, head of the state’s largest gay-rights group, Georgia Equality.

Members of the Atlanta Human Relations Committee, who aren’t city employees, are frustrated, too. One has quit over the Druid Hills case. Others grumble they’re wasting time if Franklin is afraid to offend the traditional, deep-pocket voters who belong to country clubs. They say Franklin was cowed by Georgia voters’ recent 3-to-1 approval to rewrite the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages.

“She’s got to choose which battles she’s going to fight. And in the state of Georgia this is not a popular battle to be fighting right now,” Brodie said.

Druid Hills has since given non-married partners of members a few more privileges – Demorest can now take the girls to the pool without Kyser – but they stopped short of giving full spousal benefits. Kyser is so frustrated with the city’s inaction that she’s wondering why she filed a complaint. She still goes to the club, but admits feeling ostracized. New hasn’t been in months, saying he feels awkward when at the club.

“Why did we file something if the mayor and the city weren’t there to support their ordinance?” Kyser said. “I thought we stood up and did the right thing, and here we are totally hung out to dry.”