SRA Communique: Bill M. Recalls SRA Beginnings.
From the very beginning of the SRA story, the goal of its founder, Murray R, was to have a program in which he could stay sexually sober. He thought that he had found that in Sexaholics Anonymous. He came to that program with a solid background in the Steps and Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Murray worked very hard to develop the SA Program in Vancouver, British Columbia, also supported it in Victoria and cooperated with the members in Washington and Oregon.
In addition, Murray was very actively involved with running and supporting SA retreats in the Pacific Northwest. He tried to attend every national meeting and was on the International Group Conscience Committee. Even with all these commitments to the SA Program and to his other Twelve Step Programs, he found time to support an SA group that I had founded when I was in the Sex Offender Program of a Federal Prison in Vancouver. When Murray started coming to the prison, he was six months sexually sober. He came every second Sunday for many years until the Sex Offender Program at the prison changed, and the SA program was no longer viable there.
As soon as possible after I was released from the prison, Murray and I became cosponsors, and we attempted to revive the sexual addiction recovery program in the prison. Over the years, Murray and I spent the ninety-minute car trip solving the problems of Twelve Step programs, not to mention the world!
From the beginning, Murray had some concerns about the SA program. He questioned how it practiced the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and wondered if its basis was truly spiritual or indeed religious. In particular, he was very concerned about the interpretation of Step 3. He noted that Alcoholics Anonymous did not define what alcohol you used to be a member. Murray was troubled that in SA, sexual sobriety was defined in terms of heterosexual legal marriage; sexual sobriety did not include common law marriage or homosexual unions. Rather than a spiritual foundation, it seemed to Murray that SA had a religious one. Even more seriously, he was concerned that SA was exclusive. To remain in the program, a gay person had to deny their very identity and had to deny themselves the possibility of ever having a sober gay relationship.
In addition to this concern, Murray was also distressed over the general feeling among many members that SA was not following the Twelve Traditions. For example, Murray was concerned that the founder seemed to have more power than the International Group Conscience Committee.
Because of a strong belief and commitment to the Twelve Steps and Traditions, Murray tried to bring these concerns to the SA General Service Board and to various individuals. I agreed with Murray’s concerns, but he had to do most of these discussions on his own because I was unable to get the Canadian Immigration Department to give me permission to enter the USA from Canada.
In the discussions with SA members about his concerns, Murray was verbally abused by some members and was even shoved by one person. Murray was always worried when he came back from SA General Service Board meetings. Although there was support from some SA members around his concerns, Murray seemed to carry the main load.
In 1990, there was an SA International Conference at which it was formally decided that the only sober sex was in a legal heterosexual marriage. This excluded heterosexual committed relationships outside of legal marriage and all committed same sex relationships. At that point, Murray saw the only solution for him was to leave the SA program.
Murray and I looked at other programs, but they did not seem to give us what we wanted. We decided to explore the idea of forming another program. We began talking with Vancouver meetings in which there were people who also saw the need for inclusiveness.
Personally, I still hoped I could stay with the SA program in which I had nearly 5 years of sobriety, and I thought SA could be persuaded to be inclusive. However, Murray, having attended the SA Conferences, had the personal experience of the strong opposition to an inclusive sobriety definition. Although there were others in Vancouver who shared Murray’s feeling, I still held hope that SA might change.
I was finally convinced that members of the SA program did not share my optimism about change when, at my Fifth sobriety anniversary meeting, the leaders of the meeting told me that I could not even discuss the idea that there was sober gay sex. Slow learner that I am, the message finally got through to me. That night, I phoned Murray and told him that I was with him in establishing a new program. Very soon thereafter Sexual Recovery Anonymous (SRA) was born.
Murray and I discussed what date we might identify as the founding date of our SRA program. Murray suggested that, since it only took two people to constitute a Twelve Step meeting, we should choose November 12th of 1990, the date I told him I wanted to start a new program with him. Coincidentally, Murray had attended his first SA meeting in November of 1983.
Two of the Vancouver SA meetings and the one at the prison agreed with Murray’s suggestion for the founding date. Members in these groups sent letters of resignation to the SA General Service Board. On the question of who would be identified as the founder of the new group, Murray consistently insisted that WE, the members of the three British Columbia groups, were the founding members and that, WE, through the Group Conscience, would write the Twelve Steps and Traditions of Sexual Recovery Anonymous.
Our first task was to define sexual sobriety in a respectful, inclusive and ultimately spiritually affirming way. Based on this, we defined sexual sobriety in SRA as “the release from all compulsive and destructive sexual behaviors”. We also added the corollary, “We have found through our experience sobriety includes freedom from masturbation and sex outside a mutually committed relationship.” Murray spread the word throughout his contacts and hoped for a stampede to join SRA. However, this did not happen.
When members from the SA on the East Coast of the USA expressed interest in joining SRA, Murray also welcomed them as founders. The same was true of the members from California. His perspective was that, because we were all developing the program, we were all founders. It was only near the end of his life that he acknowledged the term founder for himself.
However, Murray had always regarded himself as the leader in founding the program. I know one serious concern Murray had about being called the “founder” was that he did not want to be considered the “fount of knowledge” whose word was “law”. He never wanted to be seen as a person who could veto a decision made by the General Service Board.
But despite his feelings around this, there were times when Murray wanted to be thought of as “the Bill W of SRA” and wanted me to be seen as “the Dr. Bob”, much like Bill and Bob of AA.
As SRA grew, Murray was very happy to go to New York and meet the members there, and he always came back elated from these meetings. Murray felt that the members in New York were going to help SRA be a healthy program based on the inclusiveness and the spirituality of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. He would have attended more New York meetings, but because of illness and subsequent reduction in income, he could not. His health problems also prevented him from going to California to be with the new SRA members there.
Murray was an excellent example for all those in Twelve Step programs. He was always ready to carry the message and be there to support other members. He always encouraged those he sponsored and the rest of us to be sober, come to meetings and do the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of SRA in a caring way.
Thanks, Murray,
from a Grateful Recovering Sex Addict – Bill M.