OK, I’m going to stick my neck way out here and see if my head gets struck off.
Some folks who belong to my fraternity in one state (not mine) have just fired the first shots of a civil war against the fraternity in two other states (also not mine). The argument is over whether or not the fraternity ought to admit male homosexuals to membership.
I don’t see anywhere in the fraternity’s organic documents a prohibition against such. A petitioner must be a man, free born, of lawful age (18 in many jurisdictions, 21 in others that are more traditional), and coming well recommended. He must profess a belief in Deity. In a few very hidebound jurisdictions he must make other representations, including but not limited to a belief that the Holy Bible is the literal word of God and Jesus, that he supports the Constitution of the United States, or (in Scandinavian countries particularly) that he is a practicing Christian of a particular sort. In most of the world, however, there is no religious test or requirement; Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims are all represented in our lodges worldwide. Indeed, one of our most important sub-groups owes its very existence to several Jewish brethren.
But two statewide jurisdictions of the fraternity have recently expelled members who “came out” as homosexuals, one of them pointing to a vague prohibition of libertine conduct in its rules, and the other actually amending its rules to specifically prohibit such men from joining or continuing to belong.
While the fraternity is made up of believers of many religions, it is not itself a religion, and the likelihood is that there are many, many, MANY believing homosexuals who belong to it across the world, and who are part of what make it great and meaningful. Some brethren may scoff at that statement, saying, “Well, I know there are no gays in MY lodge,” but they are likely kidding themselves if they do.
You’ll note that I’m not saying anything about rules touching on sexual preference. That’s because, as I said above, there is NOTHING in our organic documents about it. The issue is religious (because of the Levitical prohibition) and social (because many in the fraternity interpret statements frowning on “libertine conduct” to include homosexuality).
Every now and then, the fraternity goes off on one of these self-destroying conflicts, and one state withdraws recognition from another, and vice versa, and then there’s a lot of screaming and yelling and raising hell before one side or the other backs down and everybody goes back to liking each other again. Sometimes it doesn’t even take withdrawal of recognition, because the original controversy is raised over an edict issued by the statewide leader, and usually the ridicule and voice raised against it both in and out of state are sufficient for the membership in their annual session to repudiate the edict. This happened in Florida just a few years ago when the statewide leader at the time apparently went briefly mad and issued an edict saying that, in his reading of history and fraternal law, only Trinitarian Christians could properly be members of the fraternity. His edict did not survive his annual meeting.
Other issues simply fester, such as the fact that there are still nine states where the parallel African-American version of the fraternity is not recognized as legitimate (and, truth be told, the other side doesn’t want their recognition anyway). You can pretty much guess which states those are, although admittedly there are a couple of surprises. The point is, while 41 states have accepted their black brothers as legitimate, nine still haven’t…and the issue is touchy enough that nobody does anything about it. Personally, I figure in another generation the young members of today will have had enough of that antebellum bullshit, and when they’re in charge of the fraternity, they’ll deal with it as it should already have been dealt with 50 years ago.
There are a number of us in the fraternity who have been warning the nine states previously mentioned that one of these days they are going to get us all into trouble because of their discriminatory stance. The two states with gay trouble happen to be two of those nine. What we’re concerned about is that the Federal Government has already made it very clear that discrimination against homosexuals is illegal and prohibited. Because the gay lobby tends to fight way above its weight class when it comes to cases like this, I’ll be really surprised if this whole mess doesn’t come down to a Federal discrimination lawsuit and a lot of bad feeling on both sides of the issue. Worse, once the door is judicially forced open for one class of the discriminated, it may inadvertently open the door for other classes — and my female friends will forgive me, but by that I mean, we may end up forced to admit women, at which point we won’t be a fraternity anymore.
I’ve already seen one brother from my state assert on Facebook that we ought to follow the lead of the state that’s suspended recognition. Thankfully, the leadership in my state doesn’t take that sort of decision lightly, and traditionally adopts a “wait and see” approach.
To my brethren I can say only this. In the three hundred years that our fraternity has existed in its modern form, social attitudes have changed markedly. What was unacceptable then has yielded to public pressure to become more acceptable, and finally to become completely acceptable, at least under law, if not yet in the hearts of all men. Our fraternity is based on the concept that all men under the Fatherhood of God should be brothers, and peace should exist between them — and that men who might otherwise have remained at a perpetual distance could become friends and allies in the great work of the fraternity.
I know at least two gay brethren for whom I have the utmost respect and friendship. I don’t think either one of them is going to destroy the fraternity I love by being members therein. It’s time to put these prejudices to rest and start acting according to the dictates of the obligations we all took, kneeling at that altar in the presence of God…who really and truly only wants us to love one another.