AA Meeting Directory Changes

This month we take a look at a major change in the Harbor Area Meeting Directory.

A friend had asked if I knew when gay meetings started to be listed in the Harbor Area Meeting Directory. Here is the answer – 1984. Apparently, there was a complete breakdown of meeting types. There is a long history of the LGBTQ community’s (as it is known today) efforts to have their meetings listed in meeting directories. I counted 10 meetings listed in that 1984 directory, so they were there ‘waiting in the wings’ so to speak, to be listed. I recently learned that the Los Angeles Central Office started listing gay meetings in 1982.

In an interesting twist in looking up this information I noticed that there are meetings that are listed as ‘non-smoking’ Some time ago, someone has asked me “When did AA ban smoking in meetings.” I must admit that I doubted that the AA community would ever ban smoking in a meeting. Smoke free meetings only commenced when the state of California passed a law in 1995 banning smoking in all ‘indoor workplace and public spaces.’ Well, I was wrong. Apparently, some meeting opted to hold meetings in a smoke free environment. It would have been great to be a ‘fly on the wall’ when that ‘group conscious’ vote was held!