“Brotherhoods are blood oaths”

                                        

From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

"So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to make an H and an F, and the oath was complete..."

Take a look at Pence’s essay that appeared this morning in the Minneapolis ‘Star Tribune’ newspaper – all about blood oaths, the priesthood, and the communal nature of masculine love.