In Reply to: Re: AA and legal eagles posted by OT2 on May 06, 2010 at 15:02:25:
Bill Wilson was influenced by the Oxford group, where he basically got the first (I think) six steps from. But he realized that would exclude so many people so he opened it up to everyone with one simple requirement:It was for anyone who had a desire to stay sober. At first it said "honest desire" to stay sober. But "honest" was omitted because there were people who wanted to decide for others whether or not they honestly wanted to get sober, and exclusion was a risk.
The traditions further protect AA from excluding others or from self destructing by making sure there are no AA leaders, no official AA religion or political stance, or spokespersons.
The way the third tradition started was because of a transvestite that wanted to stay sober while utilizing AA, and there were people who wanted to exclude him.
The Oxford group became obscure and it was exclusively Christian.