Although Helen's responses have me about as tweaked as listening to racists explaining how they don't hate all people of color just the "bad" ones.
Excuse me, what the heck are you implying ? To deny that low order corruption hasn't been a feature of masonic lodges in the UK is to fly in the face of a series of investigations that led to membership of a lodge being a reportable association for certain occupations in the UK.
This is not to say ALL, or even many, masons are corrupt. It is just that in the UK (which I specifically mentioned), masonry and associated secrecy has been too easily and frequently used as a conduit for very particular forms of corruption to the extent that masonry, in the UK, has become quite tainted in the public mind. In saying so, I don't think I am invoking blood libels or the Protocols of the elders of Sion, or the Essenes or Sang Real or shape shifting lizards or anything.
so, equating what I'm saying to being some form of racist appeasement, is more than a little over the top . keep to the Fen Causeway
This is not to say ALL, or even many, masons are corrupt. It is just that in the UK (which I specifically mentioned), masonry and associated secrecy has been too easily and frequently used as a conduit for very particular forms of corruption to the extent that masonry, in the UK, has become quite tainted in the public mind.
Most social organizations have been put to this purpose, particularly those with the long histories.
If the sins of the few taint the whole, then you've just bought the BNP reasoning for why Muslims should treated with suspicion.
Should we treat all non-heterosexuals as suspect because of Geert Wilders and the rainbow banners that the BNP have started carrying at rallies? And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
I'm finding your defensiveness irrational. In the UK Masons are mostly seen as a rather boring and mundane back-scratching old boys' club - possibly slightly sinister, perhaps a bit comical, but mostly quite ignorable.
Outside the fringe, no one here associates Masons with either pro- or anti-Semitic sentiments, pro- or anti-Muslim sentiments, or with racism.
Which is not to say that - e.g. - some of the Police and judiciary aren't racist and/or authoritarian. They clearly are.
But that's because some of them are vile and ignorant people, not because of what they get up to on Lodge nights - if they belong at all.
But you're ignoring everyone else's experience besides your own. And not a little British political history too.
Implying that any less than vehemently positive opinion about the Masons is equivalent to near-Godwin-ish anti-Semitism doesn't seem particularly rational in this context.
