St.Petersburg Times, Tampa edition, reports this arson attempt at Temple Terrace, Florida.
The original story Temple Terrace police find burned Bible on altar in Masonic lodge, arrest man inside for arson reads:
TEMPLE TERRACE — An alarm sounded just before midnight Monday at the Masonic Lodge, 11807 N 56th St. A police officer arrived soon after.
This is what Officer C. Morris wrote in the report:
The window was broken, fingerprints fresh.
Inside, a burned Masonic Bible lay atop a damaged altar.
Nearby was Tod Redman Stewart, a 34-year-old homeless man. He was arrested at 12:27 a.m. and booked into a Hillsborough County jail.
This was the same man who set fire to a flag outside the U.S. District Courthouse in downtown Tampa three times — once in 2007 and twice in 2006.
On Sept. 14, 2007, a Times reporter watched as three officers and a couple of federal marshals surrounded him on the same spot of sidewalk he’d chosen twice before. Stewart ranted about a government conspiracy.
He waved paperwork showing that prosecutors ended up dropping previous flag burning cases, because doing so isn’t illegal.
…His charges: burglary of an unoccupied structure, first-degree arson and criminal mischief to a place of worship.
It’s a sad and tragic story when demented individuals see conspiracies everywhere. But the point in mentioning this story at all is the individual got arrested for arson to A PLACE OF WORSHIP.
We work so hard to convince people that Freemasonry is not a religion and come to find out that the authorities classify us as a house of worship. Would they say the same thing about the Elks?
If legally we are considered a church then we are one no matter how much we protest to the contrary.
People use the law and anything else as a crutch for their argument against masonry, but they’ve done it in the past as well.
Many places, things – and people have been classified as something they were not by law.
That said, our events open and close with prayer. We’re not a religion, but every member acknowledges God in his own way while there and there are no atheists participating.
I think it is possible for someone that knows little about Freemasonry to see a room that has a bible on an alter and assume that it is a place od worship.
It isn’t how the arsonist regards Freemasonry the question here nor one that worries me. Rather it is how our legal system regards us and classifies us. In this case the law classified Freemasonry as a place of worship and they did that even though I am sure the Grand Lodge in question informed them many times that Freemasonry is not a religion. What we say we are and what legally we are seem to be two different things and that concerns me.
The Nebraska Surpreme Court decided in 1921 that Freemasonry is not a religion. Amazing that this fact has already been tried and decided, but so few Freemasons are aware of it.
Florida Statute 806.13 Criminal mischief; penalties; penalty for minor.–
“(2) Any person who willfully and maliciously defaces, injures, or damages by any means any church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship, or any religious article contained therein, commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084, if the damage to the property is greater than $200.”
They probably cited him under this section because a bible is considered “any religious article” (the $200 threshold is a bit higher than the $39.95 Klitzner lists a masonic bible at, so I’m assuming there was some damage to the altar too). They MIGHT simply construe “place of worship” in a generally broad sense simply to avoid getting sued by some nut for NOT counting the shack where he rants to squirrels and lawn ornaments as a church.
The person may be acquitted, if his lawyer is smart, since it’s not a place of worship.
The public continues to be misled about Masonry by a liberal and biased media. The reason for this is simple. Masony stands in the forefront in support of freedom for all mankind and those who would deprive mankind of the right to be free must deal with this obstacle to their ambitions and goals as presented by Masonry.