(FORTUNE Magazine) – In which Kindly Dr. Keeping Up groaningly assays the latest demarche of a certain editorial board that is known to be in the pay of the New York Times and yet is driven to solemnly comment on alleged sex bias in field hockey even when the allegation originates in faraway New Jersey. Dear Kindly: Kindly adumbrate the issue, not neglecting the etiology of your favorite groans. The facts are simple although counterintuitive. There not being a boys' field hockey team at Cumberland Regional High School, Petitioner Carney wishes to play on the girls' team. He states that genderism in the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) blocks his path. His American Civil Liberties Union attorney says the lad is ''anxious to play field hockey as a lifetime endeavor.'' Dear Doc: You doubtless here allude to the same ACLU chapter that earlier garnered many a media mention by getting Beth Balsley onto the North Hunterdon Regional High School football team, where she silenced critics by making the squad, which, to be sure, has a ''no cut'' policy for anybody who shows up. Yes, it is hard to dispute the centrality of the ACLU in all current questions bearing on the sexualism-athleticism nexus in Trenton. Dear Up: And yet one senses that hardened Keeping Up readers will find naught contrary to intuition in any particulars cited up to and including the present moment. The counterintuitive part is coming: the Times editorial board came down in favor of genderism. Biting in the ankle the thitherto unchallenged principle of equal treatment for all in school sports and everything else, the boarders have suddenly begun arguing that it's okay for Garden State girls to join the boys' saber team but evil for boys like Carney to be on the girls' field hockey team. Dear Keeping: The saber team? None other. They now teach New Jersey femmes to wield swords like Errol Flynn even though some among them are reputedly unable to sew a dimity bedspread. Teenster Debbie Schiff of West Essex Regional High has been granted a waiver by the NJSIAA enabling her to extend the Balsley precedent to sabers and, er, foil any sexists clinging to the quaint notion that girls wishing to fence as a lifetime endeavor would naturally stick to foils. One can only hope the saber squad also has a ''no cut'' policy. Dear Doctor Up: But how can it be that the New York Times editorial board, whose name synonymizes equal opportunity, is turning its back on this doctrine in the gym of all places, and is the rationale for this stunning form reversal rated tenuous? Tenuity abounds. The Times says boys shouldn't be allowed on girls' field hockey teams because this would decrease athletic opportunity for girls. A linear thinker might reason, however, that it would increase opportunity for boys, and the aggregate amount of opportunity floating around in New Jersey high school corridors would be unchanged. The self-same thinker might wonder why the Times feels so strongly about letting females join male teams and why it believes this would ''increase opportunity for girls without much displacement of boys.'' The linear fellow might conclude that if there wasn't much displacement of boys then there also couldn't be much additional opportunity for girls. Dear Doc: You were kidding there about dimity, weren't you? . . . Weren't you?