I have been concerned about a policy of our international conferences and feel a need to address this in a forum permitting the greatest participation possible. That issue is the prohibition of children from any official gathering at the conferences, a policy that has been in place for the past two years. …
The problems I have with this are both procedural and substantive… Procedurally, I feel that … this was not founded upon a group conscience of any sort, except perhaps that of the area intergroup sponsoring the conference. It appears that all subsequent conferences have continued this … without any thought of whether this actually represents the group conscience of SA as a whole. …
One of the substantive rationales for prohibiting children, and even infants, from meetings is that sex offenders in our midst cannot be around children legally, or for other personal reasons. … Sex offenders must be in public places or conveyances, such as a shopping mall, a bus, or other public place. In meetings that are considered open, such as speaker meetings, wouldn’t it seem that the listener is not going to hear anything except “what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now?” Certainly, breakout meetings of SA are, and should be, closed meetings. I am not opposed to a selective application of this policy. Yet it seems thoughtless and even harsh to apply it across the board.
Personally, … I never thought that in almost 14 years of recovery … that my gift of family in sobriety would be considered off-limits for conference participation. It’s not that child care isn’t an option; it is, but it can be very expensive and for me, it would be inappropriate for an entire day for a nursing newborn.
I’d like to propose a solution: a Special Needs Committee to address a variety of responses to this issue. … Please remember that the “sexaholic who still suffers” can be sober, yet still not feeling included because of hastily thought out policies. I believe SA and the God who keeps us sober can help us create a workable solution for this issue.
K.D.
[Please address your comments to Essay and send to Central Office.]
