Tradition 10 and Outside Issues – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 17 of 27 – Billy N.

good evening everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome uh back monday night 8 30 p.m eastern quick announcement just to get them out of the way please remember to keep your camera your phone not pointed in the direction of the camera it worries people about anonymity concerns i see that someone is here i can co-host her um so just be careful with your phones so that people don't think that their anonymity is in jeopardy um we do record this we do not use last names i do not use last name if you put it last names in your chat um i do not uh read them or anything just so you know um why can't i when we get the questions we try to stay away from current conference topics or um the general service conference just happened a couple of weeks ago some of you have probably seen reports from your delegates some of you may not uh i would tell you that if you have questions about what happened at the conference if you're pissed off about something that happened at the conference if you are happy about something not happy at the conference talk to your delegate my experience is they all have the time to talk to you find out when they're given their reports uh some areas do it all at once some do it district by district some do it in the you know where they're invited um but please um go to your delegates for that um tonight we're on concept 10 and tradition 10. um and probably what i'm going to do for tradition 10 is really do like role play of uh alcoholics anonymous meetings or non-meetings or whatever um because i'll be very honest there is a difference of opinion on tradition 10 there is no doubt about it and who's ever had the news on today realizes that the news is very busy today and probably realizes that there are many people in the world including members of of Alcoholics Anonymous who have opinions on everything going on in the news and how do you walk the minefield of being an active member of society and also observing tradition 10 which you know there's no doubt that there's a line there um I'm the first one to point out that tradition one welcomes you back to the world tradition one says that you know no money nor conformity that you can do and speak and act as you wish there is no doubt every a member is given that right um and that's your right as an aa member um and also when are you an aa member um one would say that spiritually it's pretty much a 24 hour a day assignment 365 days a year if you have decided that you suffer from alcoholism and you wish to be a member you can be and when you become a member you remember it's just there are certain times we're undercover and certain times we're in uniform and then there are certainly times when it's a little hard to tell which and because of how the world is today and how the world has been really for the last 10 years I'm gonna try to you know give some examples so let me read the long form of tradition 10 no a group or member should ever in such a way as to implicate a a express any opinion on outside controversial issues particularly those of politics alcohol reform or sectarian religion the alcoholics anonymous group suppose no one concerning much such matters they can express no views whatever so i could even go against that tradition by saying that the three mentioned here are like the cardinal sins but then i'm almost being religious right so i can't even say that politic sectarian you know an alcohol reform of the cardinals sins because then it looks like i'm being religious but let's just say that we've identified three outside issues that we really have to keep an eye on what i like to use to describe them is the proverbial stop sign that you might be familiar with if you drive and if you in certain communities and states there are stop signs that have red lights flashing around the edges of them in some of these they're so technically advanced that when you approach and go over a sensor in the road it activates the red lights to blink around the stop sign but if you read the motor vehicle law in my state where i live and i'm sure in your state where you live there is no difference between a stop sign with red lights or without red lights you still have to stop that's the rule that's the law the reason for the red lights is to let you know that that intersection is heavily prone to accidents that's why they put red lights around certain stop signs it's not because they're saying it's like for me in maybe a way I used to drive i used to think things were optional speed limits all kinds of things no u-turns the one in the middle of the highway for emergency vehicles only but they have a perfect u-turn thing there that you would have to go 10 miles down the road to go to the next exit like there's all kinds of things that in my mind at one time i probably thought was optional the the stop sign without red lights is not optional. But if it does have red lights, it's letting you know that should you decide not to stop, there've been a lot of accidents there. That's why the blinking red lights. And that's what I consider politics, religion, and alcohol reform. That yes, we can go off track with outside issues in AA for sure, but we really go off-track when they're one of those three issues. And the other thing about those three issue is we have to remember that we're here to provide a safe and welcoming place for the newcomer, and I want to stress that. We have to provide a safe and welcoming place for the newcomer. And that means all newcomers. It does not mean newcomers that just look like me, a white male in a golf shirt today who just left the golf course. We're not talking about a safe place just for white male golfers. We're talking about a safe place for everyone, every alcoholic. And some of these outside issues, if they go too far in a meeting, now I know a lot of you, you've been in AA a while. So people like us, you might piss me off but you're not going to scare me away from AA. I might leave the meeting shaking my head or not believing what I just heard, but it's not going to cause me to not come back to aa it might cause me to do the ultimate thing we can do regarding the traditions which is vote with our feet i may decide not to go back to that aa meeting or group if it has a habit of doing that but we're not talking about me we're talking about a human being who suffers from alcoholism who is physically mentally spiritually emotionally broken destroyed the way they show up to alcoholics anonymous and sometimes we think like because it's so common to run into people who are in and out of aa but we really have to be on really on guard for the person who's never been to aa before they have no preconceived notions they've never had a sponsor before they've ever gone stayed sober for a while they don't know what aa is and what aa is not and i want to stress that from the 10th tradition it's one of the most important jobs of a sponsor or somebody new a friend who meets somebody new in aa that's why when i hear people say our only job as a sponsor is to take people through the 12 steps not true now i'm the first one to say you're not here to be a trauma counselor a rape crisis intervention counselor an incest surviving counselor a dwi counselor none of that but i am here to say that you are here to do some other things and one of those things is letting newcomers know what is aa and what is not aaa and you know i'm going to give you an example of tradition 10 on the religious front and i'm gonna use myself as an example if I am sitting in the audience of a meeting meaning I am not the chairperson and I am not the speaker I do not appear to someone who's never been to AA before that I am in a position of authority I'm going to get to that I'm just your average lunatic in AA with my cup of coffee, coming to get a meeting, sitting as one among equals. Now, those of us who've been to AA before know that the chat person and the speaker are one among the equals too, but not for the person never to AA Before. Because most places in society you go, especially regarding religion, if you go into a religious facility, the person who is at the front of the room speaking is usually a person of authority or influence so when i am speak when i'm sitting in the choir section the audience section let's say the meeting topic is step three let's say it's step 11 and i get my two or three minutes and i decide i feel moved to share that day talking about myself finding a higher power or a god is not against tradition 10 for sure our program isn't scientific and medical all we have is to help people find a way to have a relationship with the power greater than themselves that's what we for lack of a better word sell here in AA I'm even going to give a lot of latitude to somebody who may be newly found religion in sobriety they may be tempted to name their God and if they're sitting in the audience and all they do is name their God it is not going to bother me if they confine it to their own experience where i can cross over in the audience is if i try to imply to other people that if you don't go to church there's something wrong with your sobriety or you don t have level two or three sobrieti right we don't have levels we don t have degrees. Now I really go over the deep end if I want to insult someone and say, if you don't find my God, there's something wrong with you or you're missing something. If I decide to read from religious book i've gone too far we don't read bible verses quran verses psalms acts of contrition we even don't now as far as a prayer we'll get to that but i'm just talking in the average share from the galley now when i am a chairperson or a speaker it is my belief reading everything i can read on tradition 10 that i should use a little bit more restraint i don't think a speaker or a chair person should ever name their particular deity it could perhaps lead a newcomer to believe that everyone in aa has that god and that's simply not true when it comes to prayers i'm just open-minded i go by the group conscience i know there are people who love the lord's prayer there are people who hate it what are you going to do i was an atheist when i came to aa if i walk into a church basement and see 20 people in a circle saying the lord's prayer looks religious to me i'm not saying he shouldn't do it but i am saying it is important for a sponsor to let their sponsees know that we're not a christian organization you can't argue that the lord prayer is not christian i will argue that the one we use is not catholic we use the episcopal version just to get that myth out of the way we do not use the catholic lord's prayer but i would also tell you that i hear people say use the serenity prayer because that's not a religious prayer uh that's only if you don't go one paragraph further than where we stop reading we say god grant us the serenity to accept things we cannot change the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference if we should perhaps go a couple of sentences further in that prayer we would be naming a particular deity a christian deity but again prayer is up to the individual group. But I've seen prayers closed, meetings closed with poems. I've seeing meetings closed với Wicca prayers. I've seeings closed with Muslim prayers. Whatever the group decides to do, it's really not for me to decide. What I have seen that I think is kind of offensive is when somebody quietly and respectfully now a lot of people in this post-covid era many meetings still pray in their seats and don't stand up it's hard to believe now we have five years five years of aa members who did not come into aa joining in a circle holding hands i mean it's it's hard for me to even think about that like prior to covid but there's still meetings now that are back to standing up and holding hands and praying standing up but i've seen people who respectfully step back from the circle. I've even been in a meeting where someone went up to somebody who stepped back from The Circle quietly and respectfully and said to them, it insults me you don't pray with us. I love the response from that person. They said, it insulting me you pray with me. It insults them that that person thinks they weren't praying. what that person was really saying is i don't like that you don't say our prayer and i think that there's a lot of respect that has to go here on on this part um i dare mention politics based on uh i'm sitting in los angeles right now actually um and hopefully i get to the airport tonight um let's just say we live in a politically charged country right now in the united states of america some of you might be from canada or other places but it seems politics all over all over the world but particularly in the u.s where live are charged um there's a fine line to walk here for sure they don't belong in meetings from someone sharing from the audience or someone sharing as a chairperson or a speaker we don't talk about political affiliation we don't identify ourselves as whether we're republicans or democrats or libertarians or whatever it really has nothing to do with aa now if something going on in the world you know it's funny that if you go to certain big book meetings they'll tell you we only talk about the solution however our book says we had a meeting one night a week where we brought up problems so i'm going to go with the book okay um i go with literature i'm not here to limit what somebody says in a meeting if you think you need to say that now was i raised to believe sarah in a meeting dump on your sponsor yes i was raised to belief that was i raised to believe that um uh i can't even believe um uh oh burning desires if you ever want to go off the deep end on a chair that's probably going to break one of the traditions call on somebody with a burning desire at the end of the meeting because i'll tell you right now most of the announcements for burning desires are an outside issue from before you even call on somebody when we say if you want to drink or harm yourself what the hell are we doing have we become the suicide hotline have we decided that we have become mental health counselors We're not. We're just not. Now, if your meeting has burning desires, that's great. Some meetings don't. But we have to be very careful with politics. i'll give a real life example during the last um two elections ago day after a primary debate somebody in my own home group went off the deep end of course couldn't be worse somebody with 30 plus years first person called on to share and uh they obviously had a belief in politics and so they took the inventory of everybody who was on the debate stage from that party the night before um and thank god a woman like four shares later raised her hand and said you know i just want to let everyone know that we don't talk about that here and that AA has a 10th tradition. And I will tell you that she changed the course of that meeting just by mentioning that. But I will say and I will also tell you because it breaks my heart because I have a brother who is a gay man and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It breaks my hard that at the end of that meeting a young gay man felt that that share was so over the top that he thanked the woman who mentioned what she did because he said, you know, I'm a gay man. And based on that share, I didn't feel like I would be welcome here anymore. And that breaks my heart. It totally breaks my heart because that young man deserves to know that we only care about one thing is he an alcoholic and if he is we want him to know that we have a way out and that we don't care if he's gay or straight or bi or trans or what we don t care but it breaks my heart that at his third meeting which that was the one chair was so over the top what he considered hate-filled that he didn't know if he would be welcomed back at that meeting anymore and um seeing him say that to that lady you know was a great thing for me to witness in person for him to thank her and say all the rest of the shares really felt me reassured that i could come back here but you know we have to be careful because there's a lot of us here who have served in positions and whether you have a title or not you don't need a title to quote unquote look like an aa leader you could be the person who people in your group look to as a leader whether you have a position or notyou could be someone who sponsors a lot of people inyour area You could be someone who, you know, has a lot of time and people know helps a lot of people. But we have to be careful, especially if we have a leadership position, if we have a trusted servant position. And that's where being in uniform or undercover is a fine, fine line. I can only tell it from my point of view. and what was shared with me and what i try to do um i have political feelings i'm not afraid to admit that i do and i'm not afraid to admit that on certain issues i feel a lot stronger than others like there are some issues that are at the top of my list that i care about i'm not afraid amongst my family although my family is crazy and it's best at the thanksgiving dinner not to talk politics but i'm not afraid in an intimate conversation with someone who i'm close with to let them know how i feel politically i don't feel like i'm talking as an aa member or whatever But I do feel as an AA member and someone who served in some trusted servant positions that I have to be careful what I say in and around AA or on social media. So I don't believe it would be wrong for me, should I pick up my phone tonight and decide to post something about what's going on. I don't believe it's any kind of violation for me to tell other people how I feel. I think I'm entitled to that. I think Tradition 1 gives me that. But I do have to be careful of one thing. it is possible at your district or your area or you're in a group or even inside your group that people know your first and last name and when they see you post on social media they know that you're a member of aa so while i think I'm undercover, there are other people who know I'm an AA member. And then if I'm a trustee or a delegate or a DCM or the chair of my group or the chairman of the local intergroup, not only do they know that I'm in a member, they know I am a trusty, a delegate, a chair of the intergroup at DCM, or whatever. Now, that doesn't mean I still can't say to the world how i feel about a particular issue where i think we cross the line in aa is if i start bashing people who think different than me i can give you an example of when i saw a trusted servant post on social media and it doesn't matter what party they were in it doesn t matter but what they said was they would never talk to anybody, A-N-Y-B-O-D-Y, the word anybody. You can look it up. They said they would not talk to anyone. They would never talked to anybody who voted for a particular person. Now, if I'm a DCM or the chair of a local intergroup or a trustee, When I say anybody, do I mean other members of AA? Do I mean that? Because if I do, then maybe I shouldn't be a trustee or a delegate or a DCM or the chair of the local intergroup or my group chairperson. because am I sending a message to new people in AA that I only serve 30% or 50% of the fellowship? If you have a different position than me on this outside issue, I won't talk to you. I don't think that's what AA is about or the 12 traditions and the 12 concepts are about. I believe if I accept the leadership position, I'm serving everybody in AA. and then there's when i name call or and i'm holding both sides parties accountable if i say that everyone that voted for a particular man or woman is an idiot does that mean even the people i sit next to in aa am i calling them idiots For me, I've just found a better way to walk inside AA because if my goal is to be effective, it's almost like if you look at the history and actions of the General Service Conference. You will notice something about how they're written, advisory actions. i would say 99.9 percent of the advisory actions are written positively they tell you what we do we try not to have negative advisory actions and that's the way i try to as someone who has held a few a leadership positions try to deal with my own beliefs on political issues is I try to just stick to what I believe in and to agree to disagree with people who might believe completely opposite than me. But definitely not to call everybody who voted a certain way a clown or an idiot or academically not gifted or a whole bunch of other things that I have seen written because I know what it's like to go around the country to different regional forums And I'm not trying to pigeonhole any parts of the country, but I think it's fair for me to give a general objective or description that there are certain parts of country that believe stronger on certain issues than others and there are certain parts of the country that politically sometimes are the what might be the majority in one state is the minority in another as far as the way we think and when we have regional forums and directors or trustees or a general manager or the executive editor or the publisher are presenting to the fellowship if that same person just called half of the fellowship clowns or just said half of The Fellowship must not have common sense because of the way they believe or voted now I'm not saying you don't have a right to say that I do believe you have a right to say that i just think you have to ask yourself do you want to be an effective leader in alcoholics anonymous and if you do perdition 12 talks about the spirit of sacrifice and so while i may believe strongly in something and while in my head i might for a moment think what the hell is wrong with the people who voted that way if i want to be an effective trusted servant do i need to insult the members of alcoholics anonymous who think differently than me i think not i think it's best for me to want to be an effective leader. And I definitely don't want a new GSR. Listen, I've been going to assemblies for a long time. I still go to assembles. If I'm home, I go to my local assembly, which is Area 15, South Florida. Every once in a while, I'm invited as a guest to other assemblies. and i know what it's like i'll have something that says i'm a past delegate or past trustee usually on my name tag but i don't even need that name tag i know what happens somebody points and says oh that person used to be a trustee that person used to be a delegate that person is the area chair that person is the alternate delegate and if new people are going to want to come up to me to ask questions i believe that i need to set the appearance to all alcoholics that i'm willing to help them and answer their questions And I know that, you know, it's a difficult road that we walk on this subject. I do not think it helps when we fan the flames inside AA, inside AA service. whether we're changing the preamble, creating the plain language big book or anything else that we vote on, the safety card, the Safety Service piece. I think it's easy to just say I disagree with it? Do I need to use derogatory terms about people who might be right-winged or left-wing? Do i need to like make an AA meeting or even a private group in social media seem like i just am flipping back channels on the news? I mean do i need i mean i'm sure we all know this in the united states you can watch one news channel for five minutes and then turn to another news channel and it's like you're in a different country right i mean listen it's what happens i'm a realist but do we need to bring that nonsense into alcoholics anonymous service i don't think so so when people make anti-christian comments they have no business in alcoholics and arms when people put down catholicism or other things it has no business and alcoholics anonymous when people throw out the woke word it has no business an alcoholic's anonymous and i know that i'm going to take a ton of shit for saying this tonight i get it i know what's going to happen that recording is going to be listened to and i'm going to have somebody tell me it's going gonna be probably people from both sides i'm gonna have somebody telling me that i'm anti-christian and i might have somebody telling me that I'm some crazy woke person right that's the world we live in and I'm a realist about it and I m saying that none of it should be an Alcoholics Anonymous service if i'm pro the new preamble or anti the new preample why can't i just say why and i want to tell you something i learned a long time ago in aa service and it has served me very well and this has served well 100 of the time especially in aa discussions or debates that might be a law described as a little heated and i'm just going to give you the advice that i was given the minute that somebody stops discussing the merits of that issue based on our literature and instead starts personally attacking somebody on the other side vote against them please because it means they ran out of a literature-based argument. It means they ran out a principled based discussion and so because they ran out of that, they want to call somebody oh that person's just a crazy right-wing Christian or they want say don't listen to that person. They're just completely woke and bringing that nonsense into aa i'm telling you don't listen to any of those people and tell your sponsees that none of it has any business in alcoholics anonymous and you know i've read some things lately online that have broken my heart and i'm pointing the finger at both sides like how they could say those things about other members of alcoholics anonymous because by the way if somebody happens to be a little bit right-winged or if somebody happens to me a little left-wing then i don't the only reason i use the woke word is because it's thrown around a lot it's not a word that i use but i will say this whether it's right-winged or left-wing or whatever it just has nothing to do with an aa group conscience discussion and by the way if the person is supposedly right winged or left winged our great tradition one gives them that right to be who they want to be as a human being in the world we don't get to tell people what to think what to say how to act um and you know after this year's conference i saw a couple of things that were posted online and it broke my heart like why are people attacking other people personally and that's my message on the politics thing like stick to your own beliefs you don't need to point the finger or call people names and the newcomer definitely does not need to see that as i've said a million times before you know i've said a lot many times that one of the best spiritual exercises in alcoholics anonymous service is that when you lose a group conscience vote that you should volunteer to be on the committee to carry out the group conscience that you voted against like if you lose a group conscience vote it's a great spiritual exercise i know there's a right of appeal and everything else but that's like one percent of the time the better spiritual exercise is to accept the group conscience and to move forward that is the better spiritual exercise um and it's the same way with politics in aa like the best thing i can do for a newcomer for me i'll tell you my number one prayer in life to be tolerant of the intolerant do you know how hard that is for me to pray to be tolerant of the tolerant especially when i'm intolerant so i'm praying for myself basically right like here i am praying for people i'm judging to be intolerant when i myself can be intolerance um but you know what i don't care if you're pro-life or pro-choice if if you have a problem with drinking i have a job to do i don'T CARE IF YOU'RE ANTI-GUN OR THE BIGGEST SECOND AMENDMENT FLAG WAVING PERSON IN THE COUNTRY I HAVE A JOB TO DO I DON'T CARVE IF YOU'RE A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN I DONT CARE WHAT LIKE I HAVE A JOBS TO DO WHICH IS TO REACH MY HAND OUT AND WELCOME YOU TO THE GREATEST fellowship on earth the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous which by the way am i checking the date right it's the ninth tomorrow is our 90th anniversary we haven't been around here that long we've hardly been here at all as far as the world is concerned people like us i won't even say 90 years ago still 70 years ago 60 years ago people like us were locked up in mental facilities and shot up with thorazine every day and given a checkerboard that's what they did with people like us if you're a woman here and you were one of those women if they decided to maybe let you out They would make you have a surgery so that you couldn't perhaps reproduce any more alcoholics or have any children because you are an alcoholic and you wouldn't be able to take care of them. That's how barbaric the treatment of people like us was not too long ago. So this amazing thing, Alcoholics Anonymous, that will celebrate its birthday tomorrow of 90 years? like when an alcoholic walks in the 12th tradition is clear my spirit of sacrifice my only concern is them now i want to talk about alcohol reform a little bit because let's face it what's different between now and 90 years ago well you're not going to find the wtcu probably marching down Main Street, right? The Women's Christian Temperance Union doesn't march down Main Street anymore protesting people who drink or sell liquor, right. But alcohol reform comes in many different things. I've been in a meeting where someone came and said they're going to open up a new liquor store and check cashing place in town, and I have a petition if you'd like to sign it. We don't make those announcements in Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the hardest things for the outside world to comprehend about AA is we're not anti-alcohol we're not pro-alcohol. We're just neutral alcohol. If you're a person who doesn't drink, great. Do you know I have a person that works for me? He has never smoked or drank anything in his life. It blows my mind sometimes. Like he's just never smoked a drink. I guess I just never hung out with people like that he doesn't have a problem he just doesn't smoke or drink ever but we're not against people who drink i've seen people bring into aa close to college campuses oh there's going to be a big meeting about fraternity hazing and binge drinking We don't care about fraternity hazing and binge drinking. Outside AA, maybe you have a feeling about that. But inside AA, AA does not have a feelings about that Now, drunk driving Obviously we believe you should not drive drunk That is the law And even inside the grapevine They do not ever make jokes about drunk driving but we appreciate or respect that the world drinks alcohol we just know that we can't but we're not looking to get rid of alcohol or to limit alcohol what assigned petitions or anything like that um we're just here to help alcoholics who want to get sober and stop drinking and sometimes it's hard for the outside world to understand that they call gso all the time they call and ask gso for comments when a celebrity got arrested for drinking and driving they called gso when five paternity brothers got arrested for forcing someone to drink too much alcohol that they call gso when some new study was done about binge drinking or pregnant women drinking or uh um recently i saw an article about people in senior living facilities who drink now our committees will help senior living facilities if they need a meeting there or they need to get people from that meet from that facility to an aa meeting but we don't have a position on drinking or retired people drinking you know when my mother died of cancer she was in a hospice i had up until that point never been to a hospace before um I didn't really understand the difference between a hospice and a hospital today I do the dignity of providing someone to transition from one life to another is beyond belief and I'm so grateful that people have that skill but I remember in my mother's hospice there was a woman dying in the room next to her and I don't know if any of you have been in the hospital I got a couple of surgeries you ever see the menu in a hospital it's not good news usually that's my experience i don't like jello number one it grosses me out the texture um i don'T LIKE CLEAR BROTH SOUP RIGHT OR HOW ABOUT YOU EVER HAVE SOME ICE CHIPS THEY'RE REALLY GOING OUT ON THE WING they're going to give you ice chips that night right in the hospice that my mother was in you could order whatever you wanted they didn't care you could say i want the rarest cheeseburger with a ton of ketchup a pack of marlboros and two shots of wild turkey really there was a lady i went into at that time there was a smoking room i went in the smoking room or the break room and the patient next to my mom was there with her iv pole smoking a marlboro 100 and drinking wild turkey and the only reason i bring that up is good for her we're not anti-people enjoying alcohol if it works for them our job is just to work with alcoholics for people who alcohol doesn't work for anymore. And sometimes it's hard for people to really wrap the heads around that. Now I knew tonight because tradition 10 is so important in today's world. Think about the newcomers coming into AA, you know, think about all the outside issues, you now, we don't care who you are. We don't care where you come from. We don't know what country you're from. We don' t care about any of that. We welcome you to the fellowship of the spirit. And I knew this so next week I'm going to talk about concept 10 concept 11 and tradition 11 but I really wanted to make sure that tradition 10 got fully covered because it's so important and and i run into so many people just yesterday uh i'm not kidding you just yesterday i was an aaa related event And they were talking about, it was technically outside of AA, but the people involved, a lot of them are members of AA. And a young new person asked a question about somewhere they were going. And their question was, do I have to take my piercings out? And when I hear somebody say something like that, I think of a past delegate who in 1999, when I was a young delegate, told me that my problem was that I was friends with too many people who had metal in their face, right? Now granted, that's a different time and day. We're talking like 26 years ago. but i don't want someone in a suit and tie to think they're not invited into aa or an aa event i don'T WANT SOMEONE WHO'S WEARING BIKER GEAR i DON'T WANTS SOME ONE WHO HAS A BUNCH OF INK AND PIERSINGS TO THINK THAT THEY HAVE change who they are to come to aa now i will say this and i've said this before out of respect for aaa members and how busy our lives are so if you picked up your two kids at school and you took one to volleyball and one to softball and you ran home to start making dinner and then went out and picked them up and brought them home and fed them dinner and made sure they did their homework and put them to bed and then ran out to a meeting because you're trying to stay sober and you forgot that you had a t-shirt on or a hat or a pin that was political in nature or an outside issue I hear people say you shouldn't wear sports teams things yeah i'm just going to remind you that it doesn't say sectarian religion politics alcohol reform and the sec versus the big ten okay it doesn' t say that okay i don't think sports teams is a controversial issue that's my belief after reading everything i can read if that's what you believe don't wear it but i do believe that if you by accident wore a baseball hat or a t-shirt or a pin that had a strong political statement or candidate's name on it because you were just trying to stay in the stream of life it's no big deal however if you make it a point to show up to your meeting wearing the same baseball hat or the same t-shirt all the time i think you're stepping over the line i think your using aa to send a political message and i think could possibly be making someone who's a newcomer feel uncomfortable and i think that goes too far so that's it i'm going to open it up for any questions on tradition 10. i will give it a minute or two for any questions on tradition 10. I see that zoom has an update now so you can get a new chat, the main chat or then it says who has a question. But I will give it a minute or two and your name won't be read. You're in complete anonymity asking any question you want to ask. I'll give it one more minute. Oh, here's a good question. Last year, a political candidate in my area mentioned the recovery community in some of their public statements and seem to be reaching out to recovering people to vote for him that is an awesome awesome question so that's where we have to say there's a big difference between the recovery community and alcoholics anonymous if a politician wants to reach out or maybe think that people who are in some 12-step fellowship should vote for them i mean they're it's none of aa's business if an aa member who is obviously in recovery likes a candidate because of their feelings on certain things that are alcoholism related that's their business. Now, if we start trying to tell people to vote for someone in an AA setting or a parking lot, then we've probably gone too far. I'll tell you something else I learned and I learned it this year. I learned it because I witnessed it. You know, I've heard of celebrities, especially TV and movie stars, who have shown up to meetings that they normally go to and somebody is there with a script they wrote. We're an ingenious bunch, us alcoholics, you know? Yeah, that's not a good way to make that person feel like they're one among equal, okay? no scripts but i also attend a men's meeting that's a very popular meeting in my county on the weekend and not too long ago there was somebody who was politically very well known who came to our meeting and i will give that person a lot of credit they usually sat in the front row they were very nice to other members of aa when they asked is anyone visiting from another area they raised their hand and said what their name was and where they were from even what their home group was as a members will do i saw him at least three times over a two-month period have to stop people inside the meeting after the meeting who wanted to tell him that they either support him or don't agree with anything he has to say or wanted to start a conversation around politics i saw him many times shut that down and what a good example of an aa member he was but we should know better as a fellowship and we should let our sponsees know the same way i saw someone ask a celebrity to sign their big book like we don't ask for aa members autographs let's see there's a couple of questions here what about groups who have a christmas potluck or some other particular holiday event so um it's a tough issue because uh and by the way if you have a hand up we don't call on people you gotta send your you got to send your question in um you didn't put your hand up okay um gso used to give out christmas bonuses bill and lois used to send out a christmas letter now that's when 90 of aa was probably christian um i'm not here to tell a group what to do if they want to have a hanukkah party or a christmas party or ramadan party i mean i don't think it's a good idea in today's aa um but yet we have thanksgiving alcatons and christmas alcatrons and holidays are a tough time of year so i think there's a way we can do it where we send the message that we're not telling anyone how to believe or what to believe in would you talk to someone who wore a political piece of clothing at your home group i would if they made a habit of it then i would there's a gentleman who wears a political hat at our home group and it makes me and others feel uncomfortable yeah i don't doubt it again if he's in the stream of life and that's the hat he wears every day god bless him if he makes it a thing to wear that hat at every meeting i just don't think it belongs what would i say to him number one it would not be my first conversation with him so i think i would start to ask myself questions is this somebody i see at my meeting a lot if it's not then i don't care if it'S somebody i SEE every week and they WEAR it um i would probably try to talk after the meeting with them i would probably try to ask them if they're familiar with the 10th tradition now you could have someone bite your head off i've had some people bite my head off tell you it's none of your business okay what i would prolly do after that is i would bring it up at my home group meeting business meeting um that maybe we should have an announcement at the beginning of the meeting that we don't want to regulate clothing or hats, but we would ask people that the group feels that hats or clothing of a political nature are best not in meetings of Alphalux Anonymous and see how the group feels about doing that. But this is a tough subject, a really tough subject because let's face it, we know who we're dealing with. We're dealing with us you ask somebody not to wear a hat and next week they're in a vest pants a shirt and a hat with that message on it right i mean we know who we are right i means you know what you could get but i i still think at the end of the day aa takes the high road um and we can try um um we can try to be fair about this and the question you have to ask yourself is this am I only willing to say that to somebody who wears something that disagrees with me or am I willing to Say It To Anyone even people who might be wearing a message or and its name that i agree with if i'm not willing to say it to everyone then i i should i just should not be saying anything yes you can message me something offline i'm putting my email who should discuss potential violation of tradition 10 with someone gsr or any member no the main chat is not disabled you can send a message to the host it should not be disabled let me take a look at that yeah you can chat with hosts and co-hosts okay the person who asked that question about what i said last week about other problems go away please ask next week because i'm traveling right now and i don't have my big book with me is it our responsibility as a home group members to say something to another home group member if they wear political shirts to the meeting yeah i don t think we need make the gsr the enforcer i sometimes think polite conversations that maybe you start talking about something i find it's best to have a friendship with somebody before i start talking to them about the traditions if their first introduction to me is i'm the great doctor no aa police it never goes good ever oh my god one of my favorite pet peeves what about political themed backgrounds on zoom yeah kick them out please remove that person from the meeting can disable that camera if you want but i'm going to tell you they're just going to come back in under another name so it doesn't belong in a i've been around aa a long time this is the most disunity i've ever seen are you seeing things that seem to be working and bringing disparate people in groups together yeah i think i am seeing things i think the number one thing is to stop the personal attacks stop the ugly name calling it is crazy in aa i'll tell you how crazy it is this is how crazy it is this is how insane our service fellowship has become now I have to change the name so that I do not get too much hate mail but this is a past delegate okay Now, during the whole debacle we went through with the chair of the General Service Board resigning, being asked to resign, you decide what it was. I'm not getting in that debate. But we know we had a lot of disunity a couple years ago when that happened. now a past delegate wrote this on social media i don't recall calling george d down on anything i've never seen anything about him to complain about he was one of the co-signers from the pacific region who slammed the treatment of linda chisholm i used her last name because she was a class a trustee now that's what a past delegate wrote about george d saying george dee past trustee past general manager he wrote i don't ever recall saying anything bad about georgia now seven years ago that same past delegate wrote the following. George D was part of the gay wing and pushed the YPAR crap. I didn't know there was a gay wing in AA. I'm not aware of that. But I will tell you, it pisses me off that some past delegate could on one hand say, oh, I never talked bad about that person and seven years before was blasting that past trustee and general manager for being gay. That is the AA world we live in today. That's insane. And if we want to preserve unity, learn to agree to disagree, learn to accept the group conscience and stop the personal attacks okay that is it i hope everyone has a great week i hope everyone tomorrow wakes up and whatever you do in the morning, not my business to say, but in a couple hours from now, AA will be 90 years old. It's 90 years old on June 10th because we don't celebrate AA when there was only one member. We say that it started when there were two. So Dr. Bob and Bill. And that's a pretty important thing for the rest of us to go into this week thinking that It still blows my mind that my father was born before AA existed. My grandfather died falling down a staircase, drunk, six years after AA started. We are so lucky to have Alcoholics Anonymous. So with that, we will close in the regular way with the responsibility statement. I am responsible when anyone out there reaches out for help. I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am accountable. I am a responsible. Have a good night, everyone.