@stragu Yep, complicated history but it goes back to times when we needed to give people plausible deniability to show up to meetings and also needed more bodies who would show up to make a presence when you were small in number.
So you can find record of it meaning "allies" going basically back to the point where A was put in there for the first time. Asexuals were always part of the queer umbrella even during this, but tended to be put under the B rather than the A (or there was a second A).