I’m sure most of my fellow Dopers would never make this blunder, but today I saw an improper flag display that annoyed me (although not to Pittable levels).
Driving by an office building with two flagpoles today, I saw that the U.S. flag was at half staff for Senator Kennedy, but the Maryland state flag was at full height on the adjacent pole. No doubt someone thought that, since the Senator wasn’t from Maryland, our state flag shouldn’t be at half-staff.
Wrong!
According to the U.S. Flag Code, no flag should ever be displayed higher than the U.S. flag. So whenever the U.S. flag is displayed at half-staff, all other flags, state, national, local, must also be at half-staff.
So if you happen to be responsible for flags at your office, or know the person who is, please observe this bit of protocol.
(I also learned from that site another practice I hadn’t known before, which the office I passed also violated: No flag should appear to the right of the U.S. flag. You learn something new every day!)
“To the right of the US flag”, relative to what? If you have two flagpoles in the ground, which one is on the right depends on which side of the flagpoles you are on.
Heck, even my 7-year-old knows that. The other day he randomly informed me that “the US flag is high.” Ever alert as always to the possibility that hippies have infiltrated the teaching staff at his school, I asked him about this. He said, “Well, no other flag is allowed to be higher than it. So it is the highest.”
General flag practice is that the superior flag flies more prominently than the inferior flag. When the national flag is flown at half-mast, state and local flags in the same display should also be at half mast.
The reason half-mast is a sign of mourning is that it leaves room for the superior flag, the invisible banner of Death.
I also wonder how many non-military types also realize that:
“The flag, when flown at half-staff, should be first hoisted to the peak for an instant and then lowered to the half-staff position. The flag should be again raised to the peak before it is lowered for the day.”
On the right, as per whatever is the defined right/left and front/back of the physical display itself. If I have a building fronting a road, and the flagpoles are in my front yard describing a parallel line between the building and the road, it means to the right of someone standing on my front stoop facing out towards the road. If they’re behind a speaker at the dais, the US flag is behind his right shoulder. And so forth.
And BTW that applies if the case is that all the flags are displayed in a linear or close to linear arrangement at equal or near-equal height. If the nature of the display is that there is one flag that stands out or is more prominent (front and center apart from all others; greater height; etc.) that’s where you put the US flag.
Down here a local legislator had to call a heads-up on the governor today as to that it looks bad if the commonwealth government keeps fliying its flags full-staff while the feds signal mourning. So that office in Maryland isn’t the only place where people missed the cue.
Well, if that’s the general rule for defining the right side (the link I gave doesn’t spell it out in that much detail), then the building I saw had it right. I assumed it would be the right a seen from the road, where most people would see it.
I had to give a call to our local McDonald’s today for this reason. Honestly, the owner is such a “patriot” that the restaurant has four flagpoles in the front of the parking lot, one for the U.S. flag, one for the PA flag, one for the Pittsburgh flag, and one for the McDonald’s flag. But s/he’s never taught the staff any basic flag etiquette. I’m guessing its because the flags are spotlit and therefore don’t come down at sunset.
You are correct, Sir! (Although I did learn that in the military.)
Due to a recent loophole in Maryland law, I have been granted authority to fly an American flag from the balcony of my condo, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to keep it lit at night without being a giant pain in my butt or being a bother to my neighbors. (Previous rules did not allow anything to hang from the balcony, period.)
I respect our flag, but I don’t want to rile the condo board folks without the law on my side. Or interrupting my sitting around time to play Taps and fold the flag at 1800 hours.
I used to work for HM Civil Service. When my agency reworked the filing system, I was sorting some files and came across a file giving instructions on policy for flying flags. My office didn’t have a flagpole, and therefore no need to ever know about the policy on flying flags, but we still had a file with the policy for it.
I suspect that people in the US are simply more aware of flag flying protocol because the percentage of citizens who are or have been Servicemen and/or responsible for flag protocol in their civilian occupations seems to be higher than elsewhere. Even in Australia, I’d guess you have some experts in Antipodean flag flying protocol.
When I lived with a family in Denmark, they had a regulation sized flagpole with the flag in their garden overlooking the sea. It was lovely. We had never had such a thing at our American home.
Undoubtedly. But I doubt they’d care about the way way so many “average” Americans do, at least in an everyday sense.
Get it wrong during an ANZAC Day parade or something and you’d hear about it (Probably on one of the “Current Affairs” shows if it’s been a really slow news day)- but in a general “Flying the flag because you love Australia” sense, I don’t think the average person knows anything about Flag Codes here, besides the “flying at half mast when in mourning” thing.
Most of the people I know actually learned their flag rules in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts. (Where we did learn that if it’s at half mast you still put it up all the way first, thank you very much.) Are scouting organizations not as prominent in other places? I know they have them other places, as international scouting is always a big part of the Girl Scout books.
(Although I did learn that in the military.)