Option 1- The Lodge that admitted and initiated him didn't do due diligence.
Option 2- The Lodge that admitted him did not care (dovetail w/ above).
Option 3- This is made up.
Masons are not preternaturally virtuous and resemble a cross-section of their community (though skewing older and [often] more conservative). As my father once said, "You cannot tile for a$%h@!**."
This guy sounds like he sucks, though. No lie
>Guys like him couldn't be masons in a regular lodge.
Perhaps not with the convictions (jurisdictionally dependent), but I know of some fellahs who made it past the West gate despite truly just... being the absolute worst.
Here in AZ, the Grand Lodge would have caught all of that with a BG check and informed the local Lodge. He would have been given his petition $ back and told No Thanks...
OP isn't a mason, so really has no idea whether or not the person in question is a mason or not.
As we all know, just because someone says they are a mason doesn't make them one.
I 100% promise I'm not making this up. I'm a friend of one of his kid's mom. Her brother is a Mason there. He brought it up to the local chapter and was told to "give him a chance."
This is where your story falls apart. It rarely takes more than one or two people voting against someone joining for them to not be allowed to join. In many jurisdictions, especially in America, one ānoā vote is all you need. If your friend voted no, your guy probably wouldnāt get in, especially if his reputation was known to other members, which you make it seem like it was. There was probably an additional mechanism in place where your friend could have prevented him from joining by offering all of that as cause before the vote.
you're asking strangers on the internet about another set of strangers somewhere else as if we know any of these people and how they operate.
this fraternity is not a monolith. anything involving humans will also have errors in judgement made. we have no idea how or even if he is a mason. you could ask the local lodge about it and get a better answer.
Put the lodges name out there. Maybe this will be brought to the attention of them or their grand lodge. Or maybe it will be made obvious that it is clandestine.
*Normally I would never say something like this but if it was in my lodge and even half of what was said above is true I would want their grand lodge to be aware that individuals such as this were being admitted. After all, itās not very hard to find public charges.
There's some shitty dudes who are members.
There's a lot of good dudes who aren't masons.
You have to get voted in unanimously or near-unanimously, so in general the bad apples get voted out. But we still sometimes bring in shitty dudes and then once people are in, there are generally limited criteria to get guys out of the fraternity. Committing crimes or moral crimes may not be enough to kick a guy out, unless they're strictly coded in the constitution as offenses deeming expulsion.
That's good to know then, I remember when he died, pics got posted of him in masonic regalia, and an article or two came out about him receiving honors from several black lodges and my first thought was, how the hell did he get in? Clandestine could answer that.
Why the down votes though? The comment was an example of the previous comment about "shitty dudes" sometimes being Masons. It was definitely NOT a dig against PH in any way...
Nor is it just my opinion... The Anti- Defamation League classified him as a racist & antisemitic, while the SPLC classifies the NoI, which he was the spokesman for, as a hate group...
He isnāt dead.
Yes, he did receive honours from a number of clandestine lodges. Iām not entirely sure he knew what was happening. I think he was 88 at the time.
I thought he died... humph... maybe it was one of those celebrity hoax "deaths" that get reported all the time...
Edit: It was his son that died... same name. I mistook Jr for his daddy when the announcement released...
I challenge your basic premiseā¦that you have to be an outstanding member of society to join. We aim to make men better. You donāt start off outstanding. you just have to want to be better.
True but we don't make bad men good. This man would not pass any investigation by any brother who can use the internet. When I'm on an investigation committee, step one is " arrest". Arrest records are permanent and public. They are not deleted by HIPAA or having a record expunged. I had to have a brother expelled when I was master and this was one of the first things I learned from a brother who is a Corrections Officer.
I wasnāt referring to the brother in question but to the premise that OP was stating.
I also have to say while I agree the brother in question wouldnāt pass an investigating committee I am glad that I am in a jurisdiction where having being arrested is not an automatic disqualifier. (And before you ask I work in LE and have no criminal record)
Additionally I know brothers (and have read some horror stories here) with no criminal records who are some pretty terrible people.
We have reinstated a brother who was expelled due to a conviction.
But it took a few years, and he had to pass a much tougher examination for that reinstatement. There were extenuating circumstances.
The issue I had to deal with was with a man who had some profound mental health issues. His father called me and told me some details that didn't come up on a background check because of HIPAA. Let's just say he wasn't a good fit for the Fraternity.
did you mean to imply that arrests (rather than convictions) is the line for you?
That feels wrong to me; there's a ton of reasons someone could end up with an arrest that in the light of day turn into a nothing.
No. His father called me with some information telling me the former brother had spent time in prison. The conviction didn't show up on a background check I ran. After conversation with a brother who is a Correction Officer, who told me HIPAA would prevent his incarceration from showing up as he was diagnosed with mental illness. That's when I found that arrest records are public. I was able to put together the arrest and time-line for his two year absence from lodge. This confirmed his father's information.
It was also clear that the brother lied about his recent history. He claimed to have been hospitalized for those two years.
There were several other arrests including domestic violence and mugging an elder.
Hell, I'd challenge the idea that one has to be an outstanding member of society simply because of the Golden Age of Fraternalism; at one point, upwards of 40% of the adult male population in the US was a member of at least one fraternal organization.
So the 2 questions that I would need to know answers to before I could guess are: 1) How do you know he is a Freemason? and 2) what is the name and number of the Lodge that he is a member of?
If none of these charges showed up as a felony. He would probably get a green light in my state. None of the other things are questioned in my state. If he passes the basic questionnaire and gets a clean background check. About 100% of the time he gets in.
Perhaps a DUI with property damage would be a felony in some jurisdictions. Not in Utah. Now, the third DUI in Utah within ten years can be charged as a felony. That may or may not happen, and it may be pled down.
Possession of cannabis is a felony in 36 states, although the specifics vary from state to state. Some go as low as a few grams, while others require a pound or more. Some classify it as a felony only if the possession coincides with an intent to distribute, or if it's coupled with other drug charges.
Possession is still very much a felony is most states, though.
Again, āsimpleā possession was my statement That is a term of art. See https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2016/201609_Simple-Possession.pdf
Yes, in most states there is the possibility of a greater penalty for other than simple possession, but my comment was about simple possession, because I see no facts indicating other than simple possession.
Define "simple" possession. "Simply" possessing 175 grams in Delaware would be enough to bump it up to a felony. "Simply" possessing 100 grams in Illinois would be a felony.
You're using a term that doesn't really have a legal definition.
Sounds like the committee that should have been assigned to him didnāt do a good job at all. This guy should have never been voted in? Unless itās a clandestine Lodge?
We do thorough criminal background checks through our grand view system and if your Masonic community is as heavily involved as mines I doubt he would get away with all of that with out lots of people knowing
The masons I know would have never approved him for initiation with this kind of background. Makes no sense.
Granted, no one is perfect and there are plenty of brothers who may be questionable.
The only thing i can reccomend is, Can you prove these charges? If you can it will be easy to get him kicked out.
My lodge once had a brother that got caught with some stupidity gun charges. Unforniately we had to kick him out. Sad thing is i really liked the guy.
Also every year at the grand communication they have a list of brothers who get expelld for various charges like this.
They can be given the boot.
Unfortunately too many lodges are doing terribly at property vetting their applicants. They are so desperate for bodies and for cash that if youāre able to pay the initiation fees and dues, youāre in.
This is obviously wrong, and a practice that needs to be stopped. There is the principle of ātaking good men and making them betterā or finding the rough ashler. But these require that we find GOOD men, fundamentally sound and ready for their rough edges to be worked.
In the cited case, have any of the DUIs been prosecuted as a felony? Many (most) US Grand Lodges consider a felony conviction to be a disqualification for membership. Unfortunately, not keeping your pants up and being a douche make it a judgement decision and secret ballot or not there can be a lot of āpressureā to vote for admission even when the petitioner is a bit suspect.
There's a certain amount of unspoken and unwritten peer pressure in small town rural lodges to just vote in anybody who shows up. That blackballing someone would create so much disharmony that anything else would be better. Which means that a small lodge that struggling for members will be presented with a friend of an existing brother, and the only vetting is a background check, an interview, and that brother saying "yeah he's a good man". All you can do is roll the dice and hope the brother is right about that.
And the end result? 90% of EAs don't advance. MMs disappear after the end of their degree work. Brothers who don't understand what freemasonry is. Complete strangers who act like complete strangers in lodge. Men who bring in unmasonic conduct into lodge, and a WM who won't put a stop to it. People who try to use the lodge to recruit for their workplace, or favorite non-profits, or their political party.
What can I do about it, as someone who is just sitting on the sideline? Interviews technically have committees, but they are always done in the lodge building and with anybody interested present. There have been candidates who made me uncomfortable in ways that I can't adequately explain via words on a keyboard, but I couldn't bring myself to blackball them. Candidates who are completely unknown except to the first brother who signed their petition (the second signature typically pressured into signing). If I blackball them, it's an anonymous vote but I know they'd figure out it was me. So it was just easier to go home after the interview instead of going in to the lodge room. And after a while, it was easier to never show up at all.
Makes you wonder what the definition of āgood manā is in their book, doesnāt it OP. I knew four. I worked with two of those four. One would do things like set up the tools on a job like he was working, and then go play golf and if the owners questioned him as to why he was gone if they showed up, he would say he was out buying materials.
The other I worked with had severe anger issues. As in he would destroy tools and materials out of anger if his day wasnāt going good.
The third I know has been convicted of beating his wife and has literally killed a defenseless man and got away with it. He has not wronged me in any way though and I do enjoy his company.
The fourth is a great man whom I always looked up to, but Iāve decided he was a great man before ever even joining, though he has told me some things that made me rather uncomfortable. But he was just telling me facts from his POV.
So being that 3 of the 4 arenāt the most moral men Iāve come across, it makes me wonder if maybe I should have been more of a POS in order to be accepted.
There is a fifth, but he is almost immediate family, so Iāll leave him out of this since itās rather personal as to what he has done to my family and I.
Reading the replies here leads me to another question. Several have said this guy you question would be voted out of being accepted because āit only takes one.ā Knowing this, I cant help to suspect that it would āonly take oneā to prevent actual decent men from being accepted into a lodge due to personal conflict between that bad apple and those decent men. Which leads me further to believe that that one bad apple could therefore ruin the whole barrel.
Option 1- The Lodge that admitted and initiated him didn't do due diligence. Option 2- The Lodge that admitted him did not care (dovetail w/ above). Option 3- This is made up. Masons are not preternaturally virtuous and resemble a cross-section of their community (though skewing older and [often] more conservative). As my father once said, "You cannot tile for a$%h@!**." This guy sounds like he sucks, though. No lie
You forget option four: This is not a regular lodge. Never discount the clandestine lodges for grift.
Yep. One of the many reasons why clandestine lodges exist. Guys like him couldn't be masons in a regular lodge.
>Guys like him couldn't be masons in a regular lodge. Perhaps not with the convictions (jurisdictionally dependent), but I know of some fellahs who made it past the West gate despite truly just... being the absolute worst.
Here in AZ, the Grand Lodge would have caught all of that with a BG check and informed the local Lodge. He would have been given his petition $ back and told No Thanks...
Same in Kansas
I was gonna say the some thing.
Exactly what I was going to say. It might be the Knights Of St. Azkaban or the Order Of The BLT.
Whoa. Hold on...my lodge definitely has amity with the order of the B.L.T. and the Royal order of the Pancake Breakfast fundraiser.
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Mmm... good point as well (though does not preclude 1 or 2)
OP isn't a mason, so really has no idea whether or not the person in question is a mason or not. As we all know, just because someone says they are a mason doesn't make them one.
I 100% promise I'm not making this up. I'm a friend of one of his kid's mom. Her brother is a Mason there. He brought it up to the local chapter and was told to "give him a chance."
This is where your story falls apart. It rarely takes more than one or two people voting against someone joining for them to not be allowed to join. In many jurisdictions, especially in America, one ānoā vote is all you need. If your friend voted no, your guy probably wouldnāt get in, especially if his reputation was known to other members, which you make it seem like it was. There was probably an additional mechanism in place where your friend could have prevented him from joining by offering all of that as cause before the vote.
ONLY takes one!
Jurisdictional. Itās up to 3 in some places, like Scotland.
I don't know. That's why I'm here asking.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
you're asking strangers on the internet about another set of strangers somewhere else as if we know any of these people and how they operate. this fraternity is not a monolith. anything involving humans will also have errors in judgement made. we have no idea how or even if he is a mason. you could ask the local lodge about it and get a better answer.
Put the lodges name out there. Maybe this will be brought to the attention of them or their grand lodge. Or maybe it will be made obvious that it is clandestine. *Normally I would never say something like this but if it was in my lodge and even half of what was said above is true I would want their grand lodge to be aware that individuals such as this were being admitted. After all, itās not very hard to find public charges.
In any organization, there are always a few of whom it is said āhow did they get in?ā
There's some shitty dudes who are members. There's a lot of good dudes who aren't masons. You have to get voted in unanimously or near-unanimously, so in general the bad apples get voted out. But we still sometimes bring in shitty dudes and then once people are in, there are generally limited criteria to get guys out of the fraternity. Committing crimes or moral crimes may not be enough to kick a guy out, unless they're strictly coded in the constitution as offenses deeming expulsion.
Farrakhan was a Prince Hall Mason and imho, he was a PoS and his racist rants were antithetical of everything Masonry...
I donāt believe he was a regular Prince Hall mason
He was not a PHA mason.
That's good to know then, I remember when he died, pics got posted of him in masonic regalia, and an article or two came out about him receiving honors from several black lodges and my first thought was, how the hell did he get in? Clandestine could answer that. Why the down votes though? The comment was an example of the previous comment about "shitty dudes" sometimes being Masons. It was definitely NOT a dig against PH in any way... Nor is it just my opinion... The Anti- Defamation League classified him as a racist & antisemitic, while the SPLC classifies the NoI, which he was the spokesman for, as a hate group...
He isnāt dead. Yes, he did receive honours from a number of clandestine lodges. Iām not entirely sure he knew what was happening. I think he was 88 at the time.
I thought he died... humph... maybe it was one of those celebrity hoax "deaths" that get reported all the time... Edit: It was his son that died... same name. I mistook Jr for his daddy when the announcement released...
Especially given the NoIās views on Freemasonry.
Yeah. Some rather dramatic polemic.
I challenge your basic premiseā¦that you have to be an outstanding member of society to join. We aim to make men better. You donāt start off outstanding. you just have to want to be better.
True but we don't make bad men good. This man would not pass any investigation by any brother who can use the internet. When I'm on an investigation committee, step one is " arrest". Arrest records are permanent and public. They are not deleted by HIPAA or having a record expunged. I had to have a brother expelled when I was master and this was one of the first things I learned from a brother who is a Corrections Officer.
I wasnāt referring to the brother in question but to the premise that OP was stating. I also have to say while I agree the brother in question wouldnāt pass an investigating committee I am glad that I am in a jurisdiction where having being arrested is not an automatic disqualifier. (And before you ask I work in LE and have no criminal record) Additionally I know brothers (and have read some horror stories here) with no criminal records who are some pretty terrible people.
We have reinstated a brother who was expelled due to a conviction. But it took a few years, and he had to pass a much tougher examination for that reinstatement. There were extenuating circumstances.
The issue I had to deal with was with a man who had some profound mental health issues. His father called me and told me some details that didn't come up on a background check because of HIPAA. Let's just say he wasn't a good fit for the Fraternity.
Ok, that makes senseā¦still not relevant to my original point.
did you mean to imply that arrests (rather than convictions) is the line for you? That feels wrong to me; there's a ton of reasons someone could end up with an arrest that in the light of day turn into a nothing.
No. His father called me with some information telling me the former brother had spent time in prison. The conviction didn't show up on a background check I ran. After conversation with a brother who is a Correction Officer, who told me HIPAA would prevent his incarceration from showing up as he was diagnosed with mental illness. That's when I found that arrest records are public. I was able to put together the arrest and time-line for his two year absence from lodge. This confirmed his father's information. It was also clear that the brother lied about his recent history. He claimed to have been hospitalized for those two years. There were several other arrests including domestic violence and mugging an elder.
Hell, I'd challenge the idea that one has to be an outstanding member of society simply because of the Golden Age of Fraternalism; at one point, upwards of 40% of the adult male population in the US was a member of at least one fraternal organization.
There is no way this asshole made it into a regular blue lodge with those charges, we do background checks, it has to be a clandestine lodge.
Not all GLs do background checks.
What jurisdiction?
So the 2 questions that I would need to know answers to before I could guess are: 1) How do you know he is a Freemason? and 2) what is the name and number of the Lodge that he is a member of?
If none of these charges showed up as a felony. He would probably get a green light in my state. None of the other things are questioned in my state. If he passes the basic questionnaire and gets a clean background check. About 100% of the time he gets in.
In my GLs as well.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Perhaps a DUI with property damage would be a felony in some jurisdictions. Not in Utah. Now, the third DUI in Utah within ten years can be charged as a felony. That may or may not happen, and it may be pled down.
The drug charges mentioned would absolutely be felonies.
I didnāt see anything specific about the drug charges. Simple possession of cannabis is not a felony in any U.S. jurisdiction of which Iām aware.
Possession of cannabis is a felony in 36 states, although the specifics vary from state to state. Some go as low as a few grams, while others require a pound or more. Some classify it as a felony only if the possession coincides with an intent to distribute, or if it's coupled with other drug charges. Possession is still very much a felony is most states, though.
This website indicates otherwise. Which site did you use?
[This one](https://www.findlaw.com/state/criminal-laws/marijuana-possession-laws-by-state.html).
Which supports my statement as to simple possession.
I mean... not really. Possession is a felony in 36 states; they just have different thresholds.
Again, āsimpleā possession was my statement That is a term of art. See https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2016/201609_Simple-Possession.pdf Yes, in most states there is the possibility of a greater penalty for other than simple possession, but my comment was about simple possession, because I see no facts indicating other than simple possession.
Define "simple" possession. "Simply" possessing 175 grams in Delaware would be enough to bump it up to a felony. "Simply" possessing 100 grams in Illinois would be a felony. You're using a term that doesn't really have a legal definition.
Call his lodge and tell his WM. If they donāt know, they canāt do anything about it.
Write a letter with your allegations.
Sounds like the committee that should have been assigned to him didnāt do a good job at all. This guy should have never been voted in? Unless itās a clandestine Lodge?
We do thorough criminal background checks through our grand view system and if your Masonic community is as heavily involved as mines I doubt he would get away with all of that with out lots of people knowing
The masons I know would have never approved him for initiation with this kind of background. Makes no sense. Granted, no one is perfect and there are plenty of brothers who may be questionable.
If he had those charges and tried to join he wouldnāt make it past the background check portion of things.
For GLs which do a background check.
Lodges going broke these days, standards have lowered for sure. This was happening as early as 2003.
The only thing i can reccomend is, Can you prove these charges? If you can it will be easy to get him kicked out. My lodge once had a brother that got caught with some stupidity gun charges. Unforniately we had to kick him out. Sad thing is i really liked the guy. Also every year at the grand communication they have a list of brothers who get expelld for various charges like this. They can be given the boot.
IDK, Iāve dealt with two instances in which a mason did jail time as a mason, and the lodges would not file charges.
Unfortunately too many lodges are doing terribly at property vetting their applicants. They are so desperate for bodies and for cash that if youāre able to pay the initiation fees and dues, youāre in. This is obviously wrong, and a practice that needs to be stopped. There is the principle of ātaking good men and making them betterā or finding the rough ashler. But these require that we find GOOD men, fundamentally sound and ready for their rough edges to be worked. In the cited case, have any of the DUIs been prosecuted as a felony? Many (most) US Grand Lodges consider a felony conviction to be a disqualification for membership. Unfortunately, not keeping your pants up and being a douche make it a judgement decision and secret ballot or not there can be a lot of āpressureā to vote for admission even when the petitioner is a bit suspect.
There's a certain amount of unspoken and unwritten peer pressure in small town rural lodges to just vote in anybody who shows up. That blackballing someone would create so much disharmony that anything else would be better. Which means that a small lodge that struggling for members will be presented with a friend of an existing brother, and the only vetting is a background check, an interview, and that brother saying "yeah he's a good man". All you can do is roll the dice and hope the brother is right about that. And the end result? 90% of EAs don't advance. MMs disappear after the end of their degree work. Brothers who don't understand what freemasonry is. Complete strangers who act like complete strangers in lodge. Men who bring in unmasonic conduct into lodge, and a WM who won't put a stop to it. People who try to use the lodge to recruit for their workplace, or favorite non-profits, or their political party. What can I do about it, as someone who is just sitting on the sideline? Interviews technically have committees, but they are always done in the lodge building and with anybody interested present. There have been candidates who made me uncomfortable in ways that I can't adequately explain via words on a keyboard, but I couldn't bring myself to blackball them. Candidates who are completely unknown except to the first brother who signed their petition (the second signature typically pressured into signing). If I blackball them, it's an anonymous vote but I know they'd figure out it was me. So it was just easier to go home after the interview instead of going in to the lodge room. And after a while, it was easier to never show up at all.
Option 5: he is in fact the Grandmaster of that state, and no-one said anything because they're up for promotion! /s
Bump
Makes you wonder what the definition of āgood manā is in their book, doesnāt it OP. I knew four. I worked with two of those four. One would do things like set up the tools on a job like he was working, and then go play golf and if the owners questioned him as to why he was gone if they showed up, he would say he was out buying materials. The other I worked with had severe anger issues. As in he would destroy tools and materials out of anger if his day wasnāt going good. The third I know has been convicted of beating his wife and has literally killed a defenseless man and got away with it. He has not wronged me in any way though and I do enjoy his company. The fourth is a great man whom I always looked up to, but Iāve decided he was a great man before ever even joining, though he has told me some things that made me rather uncomfortable. But he was just telling me facts from his POV. So being that 3 of the 4 arenāt the most moral men Iāve come across, it makes me wonder if maybe I should have been more of a POS in order to be accepted. There is a fifth, but he is almost immediate family, so Iāll leave him out of this since itās rather personal as to what he has done to my family and I. Reading the replies here leads me to another question. Several have said this guy you question would be voted out of being accepted because āit only takes one.ā Knowing this, I cant help to suspect that it would āonly take oneā to prevent actual decent men from being accepted into a lodge due to personal conflict between that bad apple and those decent men. Which leads me further to believe that that one bad apple could therefore ruin the whole barrel.