Walt & June Cleaver Are Dead

There can be no denying Freemasonry has to change, as does the Republican Party. Before you go off in a tangent thinking I am linking the Freemasons with Republicans, I am making the case they both suffer from “trying to bring back” a bygone time.
For the Republicans, it seeks the days of white picket fenced homes, Ozzie and Harriet, and Walt and June Cleaver.
For the Freemasons, it was a time when the who’s who all joined the fraternity.
Both seemed to have lost sight of what there true intention was.
At its founding, the Republican Party was hardly a conservative party in the typical sense. Abraham Lincoln led a party that smashed the institution of slavery, waged all-out war, suspended and amended parts of the U.S. Constitution, launched a hugely ambitious social program known as Reconstruction, imposed a short-lived progressive income tax, as well as creating a national banking system, a Department of Agriculture, and a system of land-grant colleges. Here is how Lincoln himself, in his Second Message to Congress, characterized his party's governing philosophy: "As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."Lincoln once described the difference between the Democrats and Republicans of his day as follows: Democrats, he wrote, "hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar." Lincoln, of course, was referring to the slavery debate and the claim of Southern Democrats to hold a property right in their slaves.
Is this the Republican Party of today?
That is not to say they have to look back, on the contrary, "As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."
As for the Freemasons, I ask what our true intent was. Was it all about our numbers?
Was it all about charity and morals?
Do I know the answers, no, but I do know we have to change, or die.
We have become a more diverse society; does your lodge reflect this diversity? By some estimates, when the year 2040 arrives the white population will be a minority in America, shouldn’t Freemasonry also reflect this shift?
These are all questions we need to address, questions very few are willing to confront.
We are Freemasons, builders of a better temple, recently on Masonic Central I heard a speaker discussing Masonry of the past, a time when all the who’s who were masons, a time this gentleman thought we should return. It was his opinion that we needed to throw more black balls. I respect his opinion, but I fear this elitist attitude is dangerous. (By the way, I highly recommend the pod-casts; they are extremely insightful and fun.) We are creating a better temple, not a temple for a select group.
Our original masons were philosophers, theologians, scientists, and thinkers. At the time the world was masculine, women could not break through. Today we have women philosophers, theologians, scientists, and thinkers, why are we excluding a group because they bare children? (Talk about a hotbed issue!) What is it we are so afraid of?

"Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled." -- The Kybalion.