Opening a closed meeting
Is it a conflict of any Tradition to open a "closed" meeting? Assume someone brings a child to a closed meeting or an out of towner brings their non-AA spouse to a closed meeting. The group is then asked "does anyone object to us opening this meeting to someone here who is not a member?"
The Fourth Tradition says that
With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience.This means that the group can arrange any meeting, any way it wants to. There is nothing in the Traditions about open or closed meetings.
As long as a group conscience is taken and the action of the group does not affect A.A. as a whole, then the group can do whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to. A.A. is set up so that there is no higher authority than the individual group. The group is at the top and everything else in the A.A. service structure is there to serve the group.
This assumes that the group has not created a rule in regard to how their individual meetings will operate. A group could for instance decide that their meetings won't vote on things spontaneously. That would be a "group thing" and not a "Tradition thing" though.
