LOVE AND TOLERANCE
Sunday, May 9th, 2010For the first couple of years of my sobriety, one of my mainstay meetings was a noontime group that met daily. My drinking pattern toward the end had been to start drinking around noon and that meeting gave me a real sense of security. The couches were seedy, the room was dingy, the meeting was sometimes quite small, but it was home. Most of the regulars had less than a year, so sometimes the discussion focused more on problems than solutions, but there were a few people with three years or more who tried to keep us focused on living the A.A. way of life.
One day a newcomer showed up and sat in the corner, away from everyone else. He seemed a bit more fearful and apprehensive than the average newcomer. When the leader called on him to share, he said, “My name is Daniel and I’m an alcoholic.” He proceeded to talk about how the church he belonged to and the God he believed in strongly condemned homosexuals and that the fate of all homosexuals was eternal damnation. Such reference to sectarian religious doctrine and the expression of an opinion on an outside issue would be out of place in any A.A. meeting, but since this was a gay group, his comments were particularly inappropriate. As he continued to share along these lines, many group members became visibly uncomfortable, and some even got up and left. Our safe space had been violated.
Daniel continued to come to the meeting for the next few days and to share along these same lines. It created quite an uproar in the group; some regulars simply stopped attending, and others wanted to kick Daniel out. For some reason, his tirades didn’t bother me, but I was perplexed. Why was this man, who so obviously couldn’t tolerate gays, coming to this group? Was it because he was on some crusade to save us? And how should the group respond to him? I was one year sober at the time and didn’t yet have a good working knowledge of the Traditions, so I sat on the sidelines and observed as a couple of those three-year-plus members, one of whom was my sponsor, took control of the situation.
They began to spend some time after the meeting talking with Daniel. They’d noticed something in him that perhaps the rest of us had missed–that he desperately wanted to stay sober. Mixed in with his anti-gay message, he talked about the same things all newcomers talk about–how alcohol had ruined his life, how hard it was to stay away from the first drink, and how he had come to A.A. for help. My sponsor and the others told Daniel that he was welcome at our meeting, but that he needed to keep his sharing focused on his alcoholism rather than on his attitudes toward gays. They did this gently but firmly. And they asked him questions about his particular case. As they learned more about Daniel, they discovered something that many of us had begun to suspect. Daniel was one who suffered from grave emotional and mental disorders, and part of his problem was a learning disability. He had only learned one bus route, and the only meeting place that he knew on that bus route was ours. He wasn’t coming to our meeting with the express purpose of disrupting it and saving us homosexuals from ourselves. He was coming to our meeting because it was the only one he knew how to get to, and he wanted sobriety so badly that he was willing to sit in a room full of people he had been taught to hate and fear in order to hear the message of A.A.. Here was a man who was truly willing to go to any lengths to stay sober.
Once my sponsor and the others discovered Daniel’s problem they knew exactly what to do. They got some bus schedules and a meeting schedule. They selected a meeting place nearby that had a number of mainstream meetings every day and plotted out the route and the transfers that Daniel would need to take to get to these meetings. And they went with him the first time to make sure he didn’t get lost. They never tried to lecture him or to change his beliefs. They simply treated him like they would any other newcomer who needed some extra guidance.
I don’t know what became of Daniel, but I do know that I learned a lot about the Traditions from watching the way in which our more experienced members responded to this situation. I learned that even though we were a special interest group, we were first and foremost an A.A. group, whose primary purpose was to carry the message of A.A. to this alcoholic, who so desperately wanted it. I learned that because the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, no group has the right to kick someone out of a meeting, and because of the First Tradition the group must respond to a member who is disruptive or else the unity of the group could suffer. We were fortunate to have some members who knew how to respond to this disruption in the full spirit of our First Tradition: A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence, our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.
AAGrapevine, November 1996
On a plane bound for New York, the flight attendant approached a inebriated passenger sitting in the first class section and requested that he move to economy since he did not have a first class ticket. The man replied, “I’m going to G.S.O. in New York to learn how to stay sober and I’m not moving.” Not wanting to argue with the passenger, the flight attendant asked the co-pilot to speak with him. She went to talk the passenger asking him to please move out of the first class section. Again, the fellow replied, “I’m going to G.S.O. in New York to learn how to stay sober and I’m not moving.” The co-pilot returned to the cockpit and asked the captain what she should do. The captain said, “I know how to get him to move.” He went to the first class section and whispered in the drunk’s ear. He immediately jumped up and ran to the economy section mumbling to himself, “Why didn’t anyone just say so?” Surprised, the flight attendant and the co-pilot asked the captain what he said to the fellow that finally convinced him to move from his seat. He said, “I told him the first class section wasn’t going to New York.”
ASAP
Always Say A Prayer
By archie! AA menber