Artist receives death threats after recreating iconic photo

A US artist has revealed he’s been receiving death threats since one of his pieces of work began re-circulating in the wake of last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling which legalised same-sex marriage across the country.

Ed Freeman originally recreated the World War II ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’ photo over a decade ago for a US gay magazine cover, but after the artwork was shared widely on social media to mark the historic judgement, he’s received hundreds of abusive messages and death threats for the “insulting” image.

The original photo by Joe Rosenthal, which depicts five United States Marines and a United States Navy corpsman raising a US flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 during World War II, is considered a defining image of US military power and patriotism, and was later turned into a monument in Washington DC.

The photo has been recreated and parodied hundreds of times in the past, including six times by The Simpsons alone.

Freeman says he’s received at least 200 “nasty, really vicious emails” and even more on Facebook, where he shared the image on his own page. People have told him the picture is an “insult to the sacrifices of the Marines and sailors on that island,” and that “you should go to hell for taking this picture.”

He told the New York Daily News that he’d received death threats from homophobes angry at his attempt to conflate gay rights with American heroism.

“It was a flat out death threat that he would kill me,” Freeman said “When 200 people tell you, excuse my language, tell you that you’re a disgusting f—-t and you should die slowly, painfully, it doesn’t make you feel good.”

“The picture has been around for 15 years, but I’ve never had a single complaint about it until now,” he added.

“In no way am I saying the struggle for gay rights is the same degree of the struggle and sacrifice for Iwo Jima,” he said. “I mean, oh my God. That’s not fair.”

The trolls targeted Ed aren’t the only ones struggling to cope with America’s newfound age of equality – as this incredible video of a Christian lady losing her shit at the ruling shows.

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