RE: Overeaters Anonymous Supports The Rainbow (LGBTQ+) Specific Focus Service Board.
To Overeaters Anonymous members and groups:
The Board of Trustees, the Unity with Diversity Conference Committee, and the Region Chairs Committee stand hand-in-hand with all our specific-focus service boards. We regret to report that OA’s Rainbow (LGBTQ+) Specific Focus Service Board has received some vicious, attacking emails from individual OA members. We are taken aback by the hostility directed at The Rainbow (LGBTQ+) Specific Focus Service Board.
While OA welcomes a free exchange of ideas and criticisms, we also want to say clearly: There is absolutely no place for hate speech in the loving Fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous. We are here to support each other in love, tolerance, acceptance, and recovery.
As noted in the OA Twelve and Twelve: “When we apply OA’s Tradition Three, we find the treasure of friendship often where we least expect it, with people we once would have excluded from our lives. Such treasure is all around us, and all we have to do is open our hearts to receive it. OA is where we learn to open our hearts, because it is here that most of us first experience unconditional acceptance” (The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition, pp. 111–112).
For further reading and discussion, our policy statements related to Unity with Diversity can be found in the Document Library at staging.oa.org.
This statement was unanimously endorsed by the 2024 World Service Business Conference.
Please contact your Region Chair or Trustee if you have any questions.
Thank you for your attention and support,
OA Board of Trustees
Region Chairs Committee
Unity with Diversity Conference Committee