Ripcord22A
Site Benefactor
And yet, you call them all Freemasonry. You can travel among those GLs in a way that non-Masons cannot. Why? Because it is one organization. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because it can be divided up that it means it is not one organization. You're in the military. Your platoon is an organization. Your company is an organization. Your battalion is an organization. It might be made up of multiple different pieces, but it all falls under an overarching umbrella. Mainstream Freemasonry is the same thing. It is one organization, made up of many smaller units. What defines it as an organization and determines which are members and which are not are the landmarks.
Your example is flawed. each indv GL would be the ARMY and the subordinate lodges the BDE and the concordinate bodies the BN and the members the companies..ect. but to place that example on Freemasonry as a whole is flawed and heres why. TN doesnt accept gays but NM does. TN subordinate lodges cannot knowling innitate a gay man. NM can. there is nothing over TN GL to tell them they are wrong. If TN and NM were military units the ARMY would make that decision and then DoD would look at it, and if necessary then congress, then POTUS then SCoUSA. no such checks and balances exist in Freemasonry. As Coach said bellow it is a label placed upon many individual organizations