National religious organizations including the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal group; Focus on the Family, a ministry based in Colorado Springs that is led by James C. Dobson; and the American Family Association, based in Mississippi and led by the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, have been major contributors to the "Yes on 8" campaign.
Rather than discuss the peaceful Occupy Chicago protests over the past three months, city officials and the media focus on what Fraternal Order of Police President Michael Shields calls "people who travel around the world as professional anarchists and rioters" and a "bunch of wild, anti-globalist anarchists".
Mike Walton, president of the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police, said Friday, "The focus I have right now is burying the officers who have died".
Thanks go not to Dan Brown, whose latest novel, "The Lost Symbol," focuses on the notoriously mysterious fraternal order, but to Tom Sturgeon, a career law-enforcement officer, who was installed as Right Worshipful Grand Master for Pennsylvania on Dec. 28.
"Nothing focuses the mind like adverse consequences," said Jim Pasco, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police in Washington.
Yet to focus on the Browns and slave trading is, of necessity, to come up with a morality play of fraternal struggle, between the good brother Moses and the bad brother John.
Then came a fraternal split.
The lawsuits have focused on issues ranging from the department's sexual harassment policies to the city's refusal to formally recognize a fraternal officers group.
(The two retain a fraternal relationship.
"Fraternal blood will be spilled," warned one.
