Every man and woman has what seems an infinite number choices for the decisions each makes daily. No one is forced to AA. It may appear that way, yet no one is made to sit in our meetings, ever. Courts may order, but what impact does this have on your independent Home Group or for that matter the individual so ordered? The Home Group’s conscious is the deciding force behind the routine and management of any AA group and rightly should be the last word in governance of that individual group.
A Home Group's, Group Conscious meeting could easily move to no longer sign attendance court-ordered sign offs. As a member of my Home Group, I can move at the next regularly scheduled meeting to disallow the signing of court slips; a vote would be taken and the procedure would either pass or fail. This is the process in which we make change or not in the group. What recourse would the Court or the court-ordered individual have if a particular meeting no longer responded to this type of order?
Each AA meeting is an independent entity. The Fourth Tradition is quite clear on this; “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.” As a Home Group, we the members manage ourselves according to our ESH on how best to follow the AA Traditions and that is all. If a particular meeting makes the decision to end the signing of court-ordered slips would it impact AA as a whole?
For example, a new meeting is started by AA members and the format is a Closed Women’s Big Book meeting on Tuesday nights at the home of one of the members. The group conscious of this meeting has dominion over the format. So if a man seeking the message of hope comes to this meeting and is turned away, what is the impact? It is my thought that there is no impact on the man or the group except embarrassment for the man and inconvenience for the group. This individual group is not compelled to allow men at their meetings, nor is any group compelled to allow court-ordered slips to be signed.
Regardless of which side of this issue you stand on or for that matter any issue affecting your AA Home Group the right place to govern issues is in the Home Group, Group Conscious meeting. The mechanism for change in your AA Home Group is right in front of each of us if we choose to use it.