Known

This is not about anonymity, and confusing the two costs people the point. Tradition Eleven asks a member not to put his name and face in the press as an A.A. member. This Tradition asks something different: that whatever a member does, A.A. must not appear to be doing it. A person can be perfectly anonymous in print and still be entirely known — at work, at church, in a small town where everyone remembers who he was five years ago. He breaks no rule. He simply exists as a known member. And when a known member takes a public side, the audience does not carefully separate the man from the fellowship that got him well. It hears both at once. The Big Book stated A.A.'s position in its very first Foreword, years before there were any Traditions to state it (p. xiv): "We are not allied with any particular faith, sect or denomination, nor do we oppose anyone. We simply wish to be helpful to those who are afflicted." We oppose no one. That is a claim about what A.A. is, not a rule for the member — and it is a claim any well-known member can quietly falsify on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.