Post by RCA Webmaster on Jun 12, 2023 6:12:02 GMT -5
Decorum in debate is also guided by Robert’s Rules of Order, which states:
When a question is pending, a member can condemn the nature or likely consequences of the proposed measure in strong terms, but [the member] must avoid personalities, and under no circumstances can [the member] attack or question the motives of another member. The measure and not the member is the subject of the debate.
====================================
Proposal for 2023 ABM
No: 5 Title: Proposal that the Board of Trustees implement a policy reiterating RCA’s commitment to monogamy as a coupleship goal.
Submitter: A recovering couple from the Friday Night Stepping Together RCA Group in Gaithersburg, Maryland Type: Policy Adoption
Motion: We move that the RCA Fellowship adopt the following substantive policy:
“RCA-WSO Policy on Monogamy:
Section I of this Policy: A fundamental requirement for a couple’s membership in Recovering Couples Anonymous is that the couple has the intent to strive to maintain a monogamous relationship.
Section II of this Policy: Consistent with this policy on couples striving to maintain monogamous relationships, the RCA Fellowship recognizes that:
1. Individuals are free to enter whatever form of relationship they choose whether their chosen relationship is as a couple in a monogamous relationship; as a couple in an open relationship without a requirement for monogamy; or as an individual in a polyamorous relationship with more than one other person.
2. These individual choices deserve respect from all. Each of these three groups deserves to have a Twelve-Step fellowship focusing on their specific needs. Each group has significant differences in its focus and needs. These differences would cause significant distractions to the recovery focus and needs of individual couples if an umbrella fellowship were established to cover all three of these equally valid relationship choices.
3. Such an umbrella organization would conflict with the long-standing principle established by Alcoholics Anonymous that a recovery fellowship needs to maintain a narrow focus on the recovery issues that it addresses.
4. The efforts required to maintain a loving, respectful monogamous relationship are a significant and demanding undertaking for the many RCA couples striving for such relationships. Any outside distractions ought to be avoided. Those who choose other types of relationships deserve recovery fellowships that focus on their specific needs. Thus, they need to establish their own Twelve- Step fellowships.
Section III of this Policy:
Consistent with the following guidelines, the RCA Fellowship is willing to share its organizational and program documentation with those who may seek to establish new Twelve-Step fellowships for the benefit of those individuals choosing to seek recovery in maintaining non-monogamous relationships:
1. While maintaining its narrow focus, Alcoholics Anonymous has been willing to provide information to other fellowships seeking recovery from other addictions or quality-of-life affecting issues. This information has supported the formation of the substantial number of currently existing Twelve-Step fellowships. Alcoholics Anonymous has shared its Principles, Steps, Traditions, and Concepts of Service with other Twelve-Step fellowships, so that each can be modified and adapted to the specific needs of each such fellowship. Without diminishing its current focus, RCA should do the same.
2. If requested, the RCA-WSO Board of Trustees shall be authorized to provide RCA literature to newly formed relationship fellowships. Documents to be provided include copies of the RCA
Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, as well as bylaws, policies, and procedures. Also included are those RCA books, pamphlets, and brochures for which the World Services Organization for Recovering Couples Anonymous, Inc. holds unrestricted copyrights.
3. If and when the RCA-WSO Board of Trustees makes the RCA Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, as well as RCA books, pamphlets, and brochures available to other fellowships, it must have a signed agreement that the following notice will be included in any publication containing the copied or adapted RCA materials:
‘The [here describe the materials] of Recovering Couples Anonymous (RCA) have been reprinted and adapted with permission of the World Services Organization for Recovering Couples Anonymous, Inc. Permission to reprint and adapt these materials does not mean that RCA is affiliated with this program. RCA is a program of recovery for couples striving to maintain monogamous relationships only. Use of RCA materials or an adapted version of these materials in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after RCA, but which address other problems, or are used in any other non-RCA context, does not imply that RCA is in any way affiliated with this program’.”
Submitter’s Rationale:
I. Background for the Proposal:
Three events in recent years have led to the submission of this proposal:
First, in 2017 the Board of Trustees received a request from RCA Germany asking whether individuals in polyamorous relationships could be members of RCA.
The request noted that the attendance of three individuals in a polyamorous relationship was very disruptive to other RCA members attending an RCA meeting.
With Board approval, a response was sent to RCA Germany stating that three individuals in a polyamorous relationship could not be classified as a couple. Thus, they were not eligible for membership in Recovering Couples Anonymous.
Second, in 2021, the Chair of the Communications Committee—received a request from an RCA group in Berlin, Germany, relative to a couple, in an open (non-monogamous) relationship, who wished to join RCA.
• The request was for a copy of available research on this issue. The response was that the specific language in the Fellowship-approved Fourth Edition limited RCA membership to couples striving to be in a monogamous relationship.
• In September 2021, this assessment was sent to the RCA group in Berlin, as well as to the Executive Committee of the RCA-WSO Board of Trustees.
Third, in early July 2022, when the Board published their Annual Report for 2022, the Fellowship
became aware of the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity and Inclusion. This adhoc committee proposed (among other recommendations) the deletion of the requirement that RCA
membership is for couples striving to maintain monogamous relationships. The authors of this proposed policy strongly oppose this recommendation, although we do support several of the committee’s other recommendations.
Submitter’s Rationale:
Rationale Part A: The following RCA literature addresses the fundamental principle that RCA
member couples must strive to maintain monogamous relationships.
1. The starting point is the Fourth Edition of RCA’s Basic Text — Recovering Couples Anonymous -A Twelve-Step Program for Couples — which was approved by a vote of RCA member groups in June 2011. The extensive history of the development of the Fourth Edition is discussed below in Part E of this Rationale. The following excerpts from the Fourth Edition focus on the fundamental principle that RCA member couples must strive to maintain monogamous relationships:
a. Under Who We Are on page 2: “Although we have many relationships, we have only one coupleship. We restrict ourselves to one partner for the full expression of our physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual love. We try to honor the special nature of our love by doing spontaneous things with our partners. It can be easy to become so preoccupied with our work, children, elderly parents, or other distractions that we neglect our partners. We may feel there will always be time for our partners later so we do not pay them the special attention they deserve today. A nurturing, healthy coupleship requires regular attention to function at a level that gives the highest satisfaction. Keeping our focus on our love can bring pleasures we never believed possible.”
b. Under Meeting Diversity on page 43: “RCA is open to all committed adult couples seeking to create or restore a caring, committed, and intimate monogamous relationship regardless of age, sexual orientation, gender identification, religious background, culture, race, class, national origin, physical or mental challenge, or political affiliation. The RCA fellowship actively supports valuing differences both within a coupleship and among couples of diverse backgrounds. In our coupleships and in our groups, we are committed to valuing our differences and surmounting the barriers to serenity. Diversity is important to our coupleships and to the RCA fellowship because each of us, being different, makes a richer contribution to the whole.”
c. Under Step Eight starting on page 31(emphasis added): “In Step Eight we need to determine the harm that we have caused. What is the exact nature of this harm? It helps to categorize our wrongdoing into the following four groups:
Emotional Wrongs . . .
Material Wrongs . . .
Moral Wrongs
Setting bad examples
Engaging in infidelity, broken promises, lying
Engaging in emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal abuse
Spiritual Wrongs . . .”
2. The RCA monogamy requirement did not appear for the first time in the Fourth Edition. The third edition of the Basic Text, adopted in 1996, starting on page 23, states under Step Eight (emphasis added):
“It helps to categorize the wrong doings into 3 groups:
Material Wrongs . . .
Moral Wrongs
Setting bad examples to anyone who looked up to you for guidance.
Excessive preoccupation or obsessions with people or projects in order to be unavailable to others
Sexual infidelity, broken promises, lying, verbal abuse”
Spiritual Wrongs . . .”
3. The March 2022 edition of RCA’s Twelve-Step Journal – A Companion to RCA’s Basic Text
contains the following listing of Moral Wrongs on page 41 under Step Eight (emphasis added):
“Moral Wrongs
Setting bad examples
Engaging in infidelity, broken promises, lying
Engaging in emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal abuse”
This same listing appears under Step Eight in the 2013 edition of the Twelve-Step Journal. At this
time, we have been unable to locate older versions of the Journal to check the wording of Step
Eight.
4. Both RCA books Step-Up to Love: A Couples Guide to Recovery (2009) and Relationship
Renewal: Step Up To Intimacy (RCA edition 2017) define sexual infidelity as a moral wrong
when addressing amends that ought to be made under Step Nine.
Rationale Part B: RCA’s Third Tradition Does Not Preclude the Principle that RCA Couples are Striving to Maintain a Monogamous Relationship.
In its 2022 report, the Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity and Inclusion asserts that a requirement for RCA couples to strive to be in a monogamous relationship is inconsistent with RCA’s Third Tradition. Tradition Three states: “The only requirement for RCA membership is a desire to remain in a committed relationship.” The Third Tradition, as well as all the other RCA traditions, has never been interpreted by the RCA Fellowship to be an absolute requirement irrespective of the other principles and policies of RCA.
1. That was certainly the case when the Fellowship approved the Fourth Edition in 2011 by a
significant approval majority of 96.8% (of the thirty-one member groups voting yes or no, thirty
voted in favor of approval).
2. The Ad Hoc Committee has proposed a modification eliminating the word monogamous from the Meeting Diversity statement (that is on page 43 of the Fourth Edition). But the Committee retained one limitation in its modified statement that all RCA members can agree with — “RCA is open to all committed adult couples . . . .” The retention of the word, adult, in the phrase, all committed adult couples, is most significant. This is an implicit acknowledgement by the Committee that the Third Tradition need not be read as an absolute requirement irrespective of the other principles and policies of RCA.
3. Another example that conflicts with the suggestion of an absolute interpretation of Tradition Three was the decision of the 2012 Board of Trustees to eliminate all groups from the RCA Meetings Listing, if the group specified that membership in their group was restricted to heterosexual couples. Such a restriction was in direct conflict with RCA’s long-standing policy on diversity. All RCA members ought to be proud of our diversity policy, as well as of this 2012 RCA-WSO Board of Trustees decision supporting it. An absolute interpretation of the Third Tradition would have prevented the Board of Trustees from taking that action in 2012.
Rationale Part C: The Fact that Slips Occur has Never been a Bases for Eliminating a
Fundamental Goal in any Twelve-Step Fellowship.
In support of their recommendation to remove the monogamy requirement from RCA literature, The report of the Ad Hoc Committee states:
“Many RCA members do pledge to remain in monogamous relationships. Nevertheless, many of those members have not succeeded in upholding that pledge. And yet, we do not exclude them from RCA membership. Indeed, from its origin, RCA has included members struggling with sexual addiction, who were not being monogamous . . . .”
The committee’s assertion is inexplicable: What they are suggesting is that the fact that slips occur requires the deletion of the requirement that RCA couples strive for monogamous relationships. Such an assertion reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Twelve-Step principles. Twelve-Step fellowships exist to support their members and to help those members recover from any slips that may occur due to addictions or dysfunctional behaviors of any kind. This is manifestly the case for RCA. A primary objective of RCA is to help members recover from slips which may occur whether the slip is related to a couple’s desire to be in a monogamous relationship or the slip involves some other dysfunctional behavior.
Rationale Part D: Eliminating the Principle that RCA Couples are Striving to Maintain a Monogamous Relationship Would Have a Significant Adverse Impact on those Couples Seeking to Maintain a Monogamous Relationship.
1. RCA meetings, workshops, and sponsor meetings provide significant and unique opportunities for RCA couples to share their experience, strength, and hope as they work on improving their coupleships. An important aspect of recovery for the substantial proportion of RCA couples working on maintaining a monogamous relationship is to be able to share their efforts and difficulties in seeking to maintain a monogamous relationship. Many RCA couples are dealing with significant sex addictions. The couple stories in the Fourth Edition confirm this.
2. It is beyond question that holding such meetings and workshops with non-monogamous individuals would present major distractions for couples seeking monogamous relationships, particularly for couples dealing with significant sex-addiction issues. Alcoholics Anonymous
has long ago provided the roadmap for avoiding unnecessary distractions in a fellowship’s recovery efforts: A Twelve-Step Fellowship must maintain a narrow focus on the recovery issues that addresses.
Rationale Part E: Critical to the Rationale of this Proposal is an Understanding of the
Involvement that the RCA Fellowship had in the Development and Approval of the Fourth
Edition of RCA’s Basic Text.
1. At the 2005 San Diego Convention, the Literature Committee’s first draft of the proposed new Fourth Edition was presented to the Fellowship for review.
2. At the 2006 Boston Convention, a second draft was presented and rejected by a substantial majority of the RCA couples attending the Annual Business Meeting.
3. After the Boston Convention, the RCA Literature Committee commenced a four and a half year
effort to revise the second draft of the Fourth Edition. A final draft was completed at the end of 2010.
4. The development and approval of the Fourth Edition involved extensive work by the RCA Literature Committee over its eight-year development, from 2003 through its approval by the Fellowship in June 2011.
5. The Fellowship was extensively involved with its development including specific reviews at
three annual conventions: 2005 in San Diego; 2006 in Boston; and 2007 in St. Louis.
6. The final draft of the Fourth Edition was made available for Fellowship review and approval via a special by-mail ballot—on February 14, 2011. The draft to be reviewed could either be downloaded or ordered from the WSO. The deadline for the Member Groups to submit their votes was June 16, 2011. Thus, slightly over four months were provided for member groups to review the final draft of the Fourth Edition.
7. The Fellowship approved the Fourth Edition by a very substantial majority. The number of RCA groups voting was thirty-two with thirty groups in favor, one group opposed, and one group abstaining. With thirty groups in favor of approval (of the thirty-one groups voting yes or no), the approval percentage was 96.8%. The required approval margin was two/thirds (66.7%).
8. The estimated proportion of member groups voting was 26.7% (32 groups voting of 120
estimated number of RCA Groups). The average proportion of participation was 23.3% for the four special by-mail ballots held between 2007 and 2016. This 26.7% participation was tied for the highest participation rate for these special by-mail ballots.
Summary of Our Rationale:
Parts A through E of our rationale, as presented above, summarize the reasons why we think that
it is so very important for the RCA Fellowship to adopt the substantive RCA-WSO Policy on
Monogamy that we have proposed.
.
Board of Trustees’ Comments on Proposal Five
The Board unanimously opposes Ballot Proposal #5.
Structure Committee’s Comments on Proposal Five
YAYS This proposal’s emphasis is the backbone of recovery for every RCA couple who has sexual or intimacy disorders as their main reason to be something far simpler would suffice it is apparent that there is a need for clear direction on this issue. This proposed policy supports RCA’s core principle. in the RCA 12 Step program. The proposed policy would be placed in the BOT Policy and Procedure Manual. The proposed policy encourages those who want to be in non- monogamous relationships to use our literature and structure to form their own 12 step fellowship.
This policy is needed because the issue has come up in disruptive ways as occasionally people in relationships of more than two people have raised the issue in regular RCA recovery meetings. While it can be argued that
NAYS The entire structure committee fully supports the basic tenant that monogamy is inherent in couple recovery. However, those who voted nay believe the issue this proposal is attempting to “fix” has been addressed both by our past practice as well as within our literature. This is an issue of the basic beliefs of couple recovery. RCA does not need a lengthy document, which reads like a legal brief, in the policy manual to make this clear. If anything need be done to make RCA’s position clearer in this matter, a simple declarative statement would accomplish the intended goal of this proposal. We don’t need a “legal” solution, but clear understanding of the nature of intimacy.
3 Yays 3 Nays
When a question is pending, a member can condemn the nature or likely consequences of the proposed measure in strong terms, but [the member] must avoid personalities, and under no circumstances can [the member] attack or question the motives of another member. The measure and not the member is the subject of the debate.
====================================
Proposal for 2023 ABM
No: 5 Title: Proposal that the Board of Trustees implement a policy reiterating RCA’s commitment to monogamy as a coupleship goal.
Submitter: A recovering couple from the Friday Night Stepping Together RCA Group in Gaithersburg, Maryland Type: Policy Adoption
Motion: We move that the RCA Fellowship adopt the following substantive policy:
“RCA-WSO Policy on Monogamy:
Section I of this Policy: A fundamental requirement for a couple’s membership in Recovering Couples Anonymous is that the couple has the intent to strive to maintain a monogamous relationship.
Section II of this Policy: Consistent with this policy on couples striving to maintain monogamous relationships, the RCA Fellowship recognizes that:
1. Individuals are free to enter whatever form of relationship they choose whether their chosen relationship is as a couple in a monogamous relationship; as a couple in an open relationship without a requirement for monogamy; or as an individual in a polyamorous relationship with more than one other person.
2. These individual choices deserve respect from all. Each of these three groups deserves to have a Twelve-Step fellowship focusing on their specific needs. Each group has significant differences in its focus and needs. These differences would cause significant distractions to the recovery focus and needs of individual couples if an umbrella fellowship were established to cover all three of these equally valid relationship choices.
3. Such an umbrella organization would conflict with the long-standing principle established by Alcoholics Anonymous that a recovery fellowship needs to maintain a narrow focus on the recovery issues that it addresses.
4. The efforts required to maintain a loving, respectful monogamous relationship are a significant and demanding undertaking for the many RCA couples striving for such relationships. Any outside distractions ought to be avoided. Those who choose other types of relationships deserve recovery fellowships that focus on their specific needs. Thus, they need to establish their own Twelve- Step fellowships.
Section III of this Policy:
Consistent with the following guidelines, the RCA Fellowship is willing to share its organizational and program documentation with those who may seek to establish new Twelve-Step fellowships for the benefit of those individuals choosing to seek recovery in maintaining non-monogamous relationships:
1. While maintaining its narrow focus, Alcoholics Anonymous has been willing to provide information to other fellowships seeking recovery from other addictions or quality-of-life affecting issues. This information has supported the formation of the substantial number of currently existing Twelve-Step fellowships. Alcoholics Anonymous has shared its Principles, Steps, Traditions, and Concepts of Service with other Twelve-Step fellowships, so that each can be modified and adapted to the specific needs of each such fellowship. Without diminishing its current focus, RCA should do the same.
2. If requested, the RCA-WSO Board of Trustees shall be authorized to provide RCA literature to newly formed relationship fellowships. Documents to be provided include copies of the RCA
Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, as well as bylaws, policies, and procedures. Also included are those RCA books, pamphlets, and brochures for which the World Services Organization for Recovering Couples Anonymous, Inc. holds unrestricted copyrights.
3. If and when the RCA-WSO Board of Trustees makes the RCA Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, as well as RCA books, pamphlets, and brochures available to other fellowships, it must have a signed agreement that the following notice will be included in any publication containing the copied or adapted RCA materials:
‘The [here describe the materials] of Recovering Couples Anonymous (RCA) have been reprinted and adapted with permission of the World Services Organization for Recovering Couples Anonymous, Inc. Permission to reprint and adapt these materials does not mean that RCA is affiliated with this program. RCA is a program of recovery for couples striving to maintain monogamous relationships only. Use of RCA materials or an adapted version of these materials in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after RCA, but which address other problems, or are used in any other non-RCA context, does not imply that RCA is in any way affiliated with this program’.”
Submitter’s Rationale:
I. Background for the Proposal:
Three events in recent years have led to the submission of this proposal:
First, in 2017 the Board of Trustees received a request from RCA Germany asking whether individuals in polyamorous relationships could be members of RCA.
The request noted that the attendance of three individuals in a polyamorous relationship was very disruptive to other RCA members attending an RCA meeting.
With Board approval, a response was sent to RCA Germany stating that three individuals in a polyamorous relationship could not be classified as a couple. Thus, they were not eligible for membership in Recovering Couples Anonymous.
Second, in 2021, the Chair of the Communications Committee—received a request from an RCA group in Berlin, Germany, relative to a couple, in an open (non-monogamous) relationship, who wished to join RCA.
• The request was for a copy of available research on this issue. The response was that the specific language in the Fellowship-approved Fourth Edition limited RCA membership to couples striving to be in a monogamous relationship.
• In September 2021, this assessment was sent to the RCA group in Berlin, as well as to the Executive Committee of the RCA-WSO Board of Trustees.
Third, in early July 2022, when the Board published their Annual Report for 2022, the Fellowship
became aware of the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity and Inclusion. This adhoc committee proposed (among other recommendations) the deletion of the requirement that RCA
membership is for couples striving to maintain monogamous relationships. The authors of this proposed policy strongly oppose this recommendation, although we do support several of the committee’s other recommendations.
Submitter’s Rationale:
Rationale Part A: The following RCA literature addresses the fundamental principle that RCA
member couples must strive to maintain monogamous relationships.
1. The starting point is the Fourth Edition of RCA’s Basic Text — Recovering Couples Anonymous -A Twelve-Step Program for Couples — which was approved by a vote of RCA member groups in June 2011. The extensive history of the development of the Fourth Edition is discussed below in Part E of this Rationale. The following excerpts from the Fourth Edition focus on the fundamental principle that RCA member couples must strive to maintain monogamous relationships:
a. Under Who We Are on page 2: “Although we have many relationships, we have only one coupleship. We restrict ourselves to one partner for the full expression of our physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual love. We try to honor the special nature of our love by doing spontaneous things with our partners. It can be easy to become so preoccupied with our work, children, elderly parents, or other distractions that we neglect our partners. We may feel there will always be time for our partners later so we do not pay them the special attention they deserve today. A nurturing, healthy coupleship requires regular attention to function at a level that gives the highest satisfaction. Keeping our focus on our love can bring pleasures we never believed possible.”
b. Under Meeting Diversity on page 43: “RCA is open to all committed adult couples seeking to create or restore a caring, committed, and intimate monogamous relationship regardless of age, sexual orientation, gender identification, religious background, culture, race, class, national origin, physical or mental challenge, or political affiliation. The RCA fellowship actively supports valuing differences both within a coupleship and among couples of diverse backgrounds. In our coupleships and in our groups, we are committed to valuing our differences and surmounting the barriers to serenity. Diversity is important to our coupleships and to the RCA fellowship because each of us, being different, makes a richer contribution to the whole.”
c. Under Step Eight starting on page 31(emphasis added): “In Step Eight we need to determine the harm that we have caused. What is the exact nature of this harm? It helps to categorize our wrongdoing into the following four groups:
Emotional Wrongs . . .
Material Wrongs . . .
Moral Wrongs
Setting bad examples
Engaging in infidelity, broken promises, lying
Engaging in emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal abuse
Spiritual Wrongs . . .”
2. The RCA monogamy requirement did not appear for the first time in the Fourth Edition. The third edition of the Basic Text, adopted in 1996, starting on page 23, states under Step Eight (emphasis added):
“It helps to categorize the wrong doings into 3 groups:
Material Wrongs . . .
Moral Wrongs
Setting bad examples to anyone who looked up to you for guidance.
Excessive preoccupation or obsessions with people or projects in order to be unavailable to others
Sexual infidelity, broken promises, lying, verbal abuse”
Spiritual Wrongs . . .”
3. The March 2022 edition of RCA’s Twelve-Step Journal – A Companion to RCA’s Basic Text
contains the following listing of Moral Wrongs on page 41 under Step Eight (emphasis added):
“Moral Wrongs
Setting bad examples
Engaging in infidelity, broken promises, lying
Engaging in emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal abuse”
This same listing appears under Step Eight in the 2013 edition of the Twelve-Step Journal. At this
time, we have been unable to locate older versions of the Journal to check the wording of Step
Eight.
4. Both RCA books Step-Up to Love: A Couples Guide to Recovery (2009) and Relationship
Renewal: Step Up To Intimacy (RCA edition 2017) define sexual infidelity as a moral wrong
when addressing amends that ought to be made under Step Nine.
Rationale Part B: RCA’s Third Tradition Does Not Preclude the Principle that RCA Couples are Striving to Maintain a Monogamous Relationship.
In its 2022 report, the Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity and Inclusion asserts that a requirement for RCA couples to strive to be in a monogamous relationship is inconsistent with RCA’s Third Tradition. Tradition Three states: “The only requirement for RCA membership is a desire to remain in a committed relationship.” The Third Tradition, as well as all the other RCA traditions, has never been interpreted by the RCA Fellowship to be an absolute requirement irrespective of the other principles and policies of RCA.
1. That was certainly the case when the Fellowship approved the Fourth Edition in 2011 by a
significant approval majority of 96.8% (of the thirty-one member groups voting yes or no, thirty
voted in favor of approval).
2. The Ad Hoc Committee has proposed a modification eliminating the word monogamous from the Meeting Diversity statement (that is on page 43 of the Fourth Edition). But the Committee retained one limitation in its modified statement that all RCA members can agree with — “RCA is open to all committed adult couples . . . .” The retention of the word, adult, in the phrase, all committed adult couples, is most significant. This is an implicit acknowledgement by the Committee that the Third Tradition need not be read as an absolute requirement irrespective of the other principles and policies of RCA.
3. Another example that conflicts with the suggestion of an absolute interpretation of Tradition Three was the decision of the 2012 Board of Trustees to eliminate all groups from the RCA Meetings Listing, if the group specified that membership in their group was restricted to heterosexual couples. Such a restriction was in direct conflict with RCA’s long-standing policy on diversity. All RCA members ought to be proud of our diversity policy, as well as of this 2012 RCA-WSO Board of Trustees decision supporting it. An absolute interpretation of the Third Tradition would have prevented the Board of Trustees from taking that action in 2012.
Rationale Part C: The Fact that Slips Occur has Never been a Bases for Eliminating a
Fundamental Goal in any Twelve-Step Fellowship.
In support of their recommendation to remove the monogamy requirement from RCA literature, The report of the Ad Hoc Committee states:
“Many RCA members do pledge to remain in monogamous relationships. Nevertheless, many of those members have not succeeded in upholding that pledge. And yet, we do not exclude them from RCA membership. Indeed, from its origin, RCA has included members struggling with sexual addiction, who were not being monogamous . . . .”
The committee’s assertion is inexplicable: What they are suggesting is that the fact that slips occur requires the deletion of the requirement that RCA couples strive for monogamous relationships. Such an assertion reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Twelve-Step principles. Twelve-Step fellowships exist to support their members and to help those members recover from any slips that may occur due to addictions or dysfunctional behaviors of any kind. This is manifestly the case for RCA. A primary objective of RCA is to help members recover from slips which may occur whether the slip is related to a couple’s desire to be in a monogamous relationship or the slip involves some other dysfunctional behavior.
Rationale Part D: Eliminating the Principle that RCA Couples are Striving to Maintain a Monogamous Relationship Would Have a Significant Adverse Impact on those Couples Seeking to Maintain a Monogamous Relationship.
1. RCA meetings, workshops, and sponsor meetings provide significant and unique opportunities for RCA couples to share their experience, strength, and hope as they work on improving their coupleships. An important aspect of recovery for the substantial proportion of RCA couples working on maintaining a monogamous relationship is to be able to share their efforts and difficulties in seeking to maintain a monogamous relationship. Many RCA couples are dealing with significant sex addictions. The couple stories in the Fourth Edition confirm this.
2. It is beyond question that holding such meetings and workshops with non-monogamous individuals would present major distractions for couples seeking monogamous relationships, particularly for couples dealing with significant sex-addiction issues. Alcoholics Anonymous
has long ago provided the roadmap for avoiding unnecessary distractions in a fellowship’s recovery efforts: A Twelve-Step Fellowship must maintain a narrow focus on the recovery issues that addresses.
Rationale Part E: Critical to the Rationale of this Proposal is an Understanding of the
Involvement that the RCA Fellowship had in the Development and Approval of the Fourth
Edition of RCA’s Basic Text.
1. At the 2005 San Diego Convention, the Literature Committee’s first draft of the proposed new Fourth Edition was presented to the Fellowship for review.
2. At the 2006 Boston Convention, a second draft was presented and rejected by a substantial majority of the RCA couples attending the Annual Business Meeting.
3. After the Boston Convention, the RCA Literature Committee commenced a four and a half year
effort to revise the second draft of the Fourth Edition. A final draft was completed at the end of 2010.
4. The development and approval of the Fourth Edition involved extensive work by the RCA Literature Committee over its eight-year development, from 2003 through its approval by the Fellowship in June 2011.
5. The Fellowship was extensively involved with its development including specific reviews at
three annual conventions: 2005 in San Diego; 2006 in Boston; and 2007 in St. Louis.
6. The final draft of the Fourth Edition was made available for Fellowship review and approval via a special by-mail ballot—on February 14, 2011. The draft to be reviewed could either be downloaded or ordered from the WSO. The deadline for the Member Groups to submit their votes was June 16, 2011. Thus, slightly over four months were provided for member groups to review the final draft of the Fourth Edition.
7. The Fellowship approved the Fourth Edition by a very substantial majority. The number of RCA groups voting was thirty-two with thirty groups in favor, one group opposed, and one group abstaining. With thirty groups in favor of approval (of the thirty-one groups voting yes or no), the approval percentage was 96.8%. The required approval margin was two/thirds (66.7%).
8. The estimated proportion of member groups voting was 26.7% (32 groups voting of 120
estimated number of RCA Groups). The average proportion of participation was 23.3% for the four special by-mail ballots held between 2007 and 2016. This 26.7% participation was tied for the highest participation rate for these special by-mail ballots.
Summary of Our Rationale:
Parts A through E of our rationale, as presented above, summarize the reasons why we think that
it is so very important for the RCA Fellowship to adopt the substantive RCA-WSO Policy on
Monogamy that we have proposed.
.
Board of Trustees’ Comments on Proposal Five
The Board unanimously opposes Ballot Proposal #5.
Structure Committee’s Comments on Proposal Five
YAYS This proposal’s emphasis is the backbone of recovery for every RCA couple who has sexual or intimacy disorders as their main reason to be something far simpler would suffice it is apparent that there is a need for clear direction on this issue. This proposed policy supports RCA’s core principle. in the RCA 12 Step program. The proposed policy would be placed in the BOT Policy and Procedure Manual. The proposed policy encourages those who want to be in non- monogamous relationships to use our literature and structure to form their own 12 step fellowship.
This policy is needed because the issue has come up in disruptive ways as occasionally people in relationships of more than two people have raised the issue in regular RCA recovery meetings. While it can be argued that
NAYS The entire structure committee fully supports the basic tenant that monogamy is inherent in couple recovery. However, those who voted nay believe the issue this proposal is attempting to “fix” has been addressed both by our past practice as well as within our literature. This is an issue of the basic beliefs of couple recovery. RCA does not need a lengthy document, which reads like a legal brief, in the policy manual to make this clear. If anything need be done to make RCA’s position clearer in this matter, a simple declarative statement would accomplish the intended goal of this proposal. We don’t need a “legal” solution, but clear understanding of the nature of intimacy.
3 Yays 3 Nays