So, my personal gender-disparity-in-sports story:

In '98, when I was cycling and racing pretty seriously, I was a strong
Category 4 racer.  Men's cycling categories go from 1 to 5, where Cat
1 is effectively a semi-professional, and 5 is never-raced-before.  So
Cat 4 is fairly low on the totem pole.  That summer, I participated in
the two largest stage races in New England, national calendar events
that drew people from all over the country in all categories, top
domestic pro teams, etc. In both races, the first stage was a time
trial, i.e., each individual against the clock, no drafting, etc.
Everyone races the same course, so, barring changes in weather/wind
over the course of the day, you get some decent comparison between
ability levels.

In the first race, I placed 23rd in the TT, about 2 minutes behind the
leader of our race.  In the second, which was mostly an uphill course,
I placed 21st, about 1.5 minutes behind the leader.

Had I been racing in the Pro/1/2 women's field, against some of the
best women cyclists in the country, I would have finished 8th in the
first race, and 2nd in the other.

This really shocked me.  I had no idea the gender disparity was so
large. I have a moderate amount of talent in cycling, especially when
it comes to sprinting, but with only a year of moderate training after
a five year hiatus I could have been competetive at some of the
highest levels of women's cycling, against women who had been training
and racing professionally for a number of years.

So, with this as a background, a couple of opinions on the topics at hand:

It would be foolish to divide cycling (and, I suspect, many other
sports) only by ability level.  There are physical differences that
are just going to overwhelm even the most dedicated of women cyclists.
It hardly seems fair to force someone to compete at a level where even
if they're incredibly dedicated and have natural talent they'll only
end up in second string amateur competition.  Especially when women's
races are interesting and exciting in and of themselves, even if
they're not as fast or as long as the men's races.

That said, US amateur cycling allows women to compete in the men's
races if they want to, which I think is a good idea.  They're even
allowed to race down a category, or in one of the age-separated
categories at their age + 10 or 20 years.  (Men are not allowed to
race in women's races.)  This allows women to compete against men
directly if they choose to, and gives them great training
opportunities.  But it recognizes that women's racing has its own
competition and it's more fair to have their own field.  Not many
women choose to race in the men's races (slightly more often they'll
race in say the men's 45+ or 55+ category rather than the Cat 3s or
4s).  And most women will be unhappy if they have to race in one of
the men's races (some races don't have a separate women's fields). The
less experienced racers will also tend to be unhappy in a similar
manner if there's only an open women's field (i.e., pros to beginners
race in one group).  It can be really discouraging if you can't keep
up with the pack or get pulled out of the race because you're too far
behind, and when there's that wide of an ability range, that's going
to happen a lot.  People generally want to find a category where they
can be competitive, and push their limits, but not get blown away.

However, there are clearly sports (and other activities) where men and
women can compete at the highest levels, and there's little reason to
prohibit them from doing so.  For sports in which there 

points: 

 * good for women's sports: role models, clear path of advancement,
   highly visible elite competition

 * most pro team sports require sufficiently high levels of
   performance that it doesn't make economic sense for the owners to
   try to field a women's team against a men's team-- they just won't
   do well enough on average to merit the financial investment.
   Whereas if they can get enough viewer interest in watching the
   women's sport separately, that will make economic sense to them.

I think Deford is wrong in his assessment, because Wie competing at
the highest levels of golf will generate more excitement and publicity
for women's golf in general.  If she actually performs well at that
level, that would be even better, since that would show that golf is a
sport at which men and women can compete in the highest levels.  I
think that if Wie (and other top women golfers) abandoned the LPGA
entirely, however, women's golfing would likely suffer in the short to
medium term, because the LPGA would lose its best members, and they
would be more likely to get lost in the noise of the PGA.