Photography of a newborn baby cradled in an American flag has gone viral after a Facebook photography critique group slammed it for being disrespectful and against the U.S. Flag Code.
Vanessa Hicks, the photographer who took the image of the baby of a military family, says she did not expect that her photo, which she posted on her Facebook business page, would catch the attention of the Internet. A U.S. Navy veteran herself and wife to a Navy member currently in deployment, Hicks says she took the photo using a vinyl prop flag she purchased at a dollar store. She says she believes the photo of the baby sleeping soundly nestled by the flag symbolizes what it means to be an American and what every service member is fighting for.
"I am very well aware of our U.S. Flag Code," she says. "I also know exactly what desecration of a flag is. It's when you pull into ports and you see protesters with our flag and have spray painted horrible things on it. It's when you watch the news and you see other countries burning our flags, and you are a young Quartermaster scared because you know you are just a few nautical miles from that exact country."
However, a photography critique group on Facebook got hold of the photo and posted it online on its page, which Hicks says is "meant to bash other photographers." Although Hicks' photograph gathered several positive comments, the Facebook page You Call Yourself a Photographer? says her photo is "disrespectful, rude, tacky, disgusting, and against the U.S. Flag Code."
"This flag is a symbol of everything my son died for many years ago," says one of the anonymous posters of the group. "It was of the utmost honor to have a flag laid upon your coffin as my son did. That honor is taken away when disrespectful photographers throw our flag code out the window."
The page admin, who says he spent 27 years of service in the military, also called out the Clevenger family in the picture, saying the father "disgraced our fallen soldiers" by disobeying the code and "obviously" not caring about it.
A few commenters agreed with the Facebook page and say that the use of the American flag as a carrier or hammock for the baby is in violation of the Flag Code, which states that the flag should never touch anything beneath it, it should never be used as apparel, bedding, or drapery, and should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
But many other commenters sided with Hicks, accusing the page admins of cyber-bullying her and the family who owns the photo. Hicks also says she has received several private messages from people telling her she and her husband as well as the Clevenger family should be ashamed of themselves. She says she almost deleted the picture from her business page but decided against it.
"I went to the group and I stood up to them," she says. "I stood up for what I believed in! and you know what, so did many others! A photography group saw the picture and agreed there was nothing disrespectful about it and went to the page and stood up for it."
The U.S. Flag Code is a federal law that mandates the treatment of the American flag. The code, however, does not have provisions for punishing people who violate the code, and the Supreme Court has previously ruled that anyone who uses the flag inconsistent with the code is protected from legal repercussions through the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
"The Flag Code does not prescribe any penalties for non-compliance nor does it include enforcement provisions; rather the Code functions simply as a guide to be voluntarily followed by civilians and civilian groups," says [pdf] the Congressional Research Service in a memo sent to Congress in 2008.
