Thirty-One People and a Cake

The group turns forty this month and somebody brings a camera. Thirty-one people, a sheet cake with the group's name piped across it in blue, the banner on the wall behind them. It is a good photograph. It goes up that evening with the group's name and the date, because that was the point of taking it. Twenty-nine of those people are perfectly happy. Two are not, and their reasons are nobody's business — that is the point. Whether a member appears in public as a member is a decision A.A. leaves to that member alone, every single time. The camera just made it for two people while they smiled, because saying no in a room full of friends costs more in the moment than it seems worth. The long form is specific about the medium (Big Book, p. 565): our names and pictures as A.A. members "ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed." Nobody in that hall broadcast anything. They took a nice picture at a party. The photograph is the broadcast — and it published a decision that was never the group's to make. Not because membership is a secret; because it is each member's own to tell.