Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
somewhat late addition to the GOUSA ranks , joining around 2009 , and was asked to become an Officer in 2010 , becoming the last recorded Grand Master in 2012 . Ehrlich had been initiated into the Coral Springs Lodge No . 373 , under the Grand Lodge of Florida , but , in a similar manner to Peavy , he became alarmed at the racism that he had witnessed in the regular Florida Masonic system , best exemplified at the time of writing by the Grand Lodge not fully recognising the Florida based Prince Hall Grand Lodge . Ehrlich also cited an incident where a brother professed himself to be a Wiccan and an edict was then passed against Pagans by the Grand Lodge . Ehrlich became increasingly disillusioned and after browsing on the internet , came across the GOU- SA website , where he got in contact with Jeff Peace , and the rest , as they say , was history .
Other lodges were certainly mentioned as part of the promotional online drive of GOUSA in an attempt to make the organisation appear bigger than it actually was . The lack of actual GOUSA Masons on discussion forums and blogs led Ed King to note on his website masonicinfo . com that there were only a few active members 25 something that Chris Hodapp also put forward on his Freemasonry for dummies blog . 26 The frequent GOUSA online activists consisted of the likes of Peace ,
Tom Coste , the Michalek brothers and David Cooksey , but many of the active Masons in lodges such as Praxis , Benjamin Franklin and Spinoza , seemed happy to not get involved in online fights and just enjoy their Freemasonry . Other lodges associated with GOUSA such as Liberty , Electra , Excelsior and Universelle appeared and just as quickly disappeared on various websites , they may have been ‘ Triangles ’ or merely names in the ever active promotional drive for the project . Jeff Peace was and still is , highly internet savvy , and this drive reflected his business objective for GOUSA ; creating websites for various virtual lodges that didn ’ t actually exist but created a visage of a creative and successful new form of Freemasonry , something that angered the voices of the mainstream even more as each corner fought for internet domination and for the hearts and minds of ‘ Generation X Masons ’. John Slifko emphasised this as a failing element of GOUSA :
‘ Jeff needed to be sitting in lodges , building lodges but instead built a fanciful world of lodges on the internet , which I think upset Ed King endlessly . That is when Ed began to pick on Intrepid as a fantasy . We had seven members but we were scattered geographically . With a little more time I could have had much more than seven for Intrepid ...’
25 See the Ed King run website
www . masonicinfo . com which showcased regular anti-GOUSA discussion and ridiculing the leading figures of the organisation , especially Jeff Peace and John Slifko [ Last accessed 17
th April , 2017 ].
26 See Chris Hodapp ’ s blog
www . freemasonsfordummies . blogspot . com which also contributed to the anti-GOUSA discussion on a number of posts and held a number of heated discussions in the comments of the various posts [ Last accessed 17
th April , 2017 ].
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