<p>he United States Flag Code states: “The Flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem of display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferable by burning.” Throughout America, volunteer organizations commonly carry out this duty as an act of community service, destroying old, worn, tattered, frayed, and/or faded Flags.
The Flag Keepers’ Flag Burning Ceremony*
*
CEREMONY LEADER
<em>(Include a chaplain/prayer per your tradition)
*
“We are gathered here to destroy these flags that have been deemed no longer serviceable.</em>It is proclaimed that each of these flags has served well…”</p>
<p>I remembered learning this as a girl scout eons ago. People thought I was crazy, but I remembered it right!!!</p>
<p>Not crazy - have been to many flag burning ceremonies on Flag Day, which just passed. The Elks and Knights of Columbus do even more, but include this, as well.</p>
<p>If made illegal to burn the american flag, people will still burn the flag and it will bring more attention to those burning the flag. Usually, those burning the flag are representing political groups and such and they will be martyrs, so to speak, and attract more public attention to their intentions than before.</p>
<p>"The proposed one-line amendment to the Constitution reads, “The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.”</p>
<p>What does that mean? it seems pretty broad to me…</p>
<p>Doesn’t even mention burming, but what if someone carried it in a parade and dropped it? what are the parameters?</p>
<p>As a Girl Scout leader, I have attended and led many flag retirement ceremonies. These have always had the dignity of the flag as the key element to the ceremony. Desecration is the antithesis of dignity.</p>
<p>In our county, burning the flag is illegal anyway, as we are under an “open burn ban,” and the burning of any item of “man-made” materials has been illegal since 1987 under the Environmental Protection code. It is illegal to burn even paper trash in a burning barrel.</p>
<p>Obviously, there are already laws on the books that could be used to arrest flag-burners, just as mobsters used to get jail time for “income tax evasion.”</p>
<p>But it doesn’t say burn- what bout draping the flag on the shoulders…this law is so vague, what else does it cover.</p>
<p>So say you burn the flag, but say the words? Burning the flag is a way of “retiring” it. So don’t the laws rules conflict, because it is the same act, just done with a different “attitude”- who is to judge an attitude? </p>
<p>I can burn a flag if I say I am retiring it, I can not burn a flag if I am getting rid of it?</p>
<p>I love the flag, don’t get me wrong…but how is this law supposed to work,say a bunch of people at a protest are burning a flag, a cop comes up, and they say, well we are retring it…what then…as well, who is to say what constitutes a flag? What if someone made their own flag, can they not destroy their own property? Does it all have to do with attitude? If my mom is in a protest, and has written US out of Iraq on her flag, which she bought with her own money, is that desicration? If a trucker has it on their truck and it gets filthy, or falls off, is that? What about clothing, if a flag is material, what about a shirt made from a flag? Is that desicration? </p>
<p>Creating a law so vague has a myriad of problems.</p>
<p>Am I remembering incorrectly, or did the Supreme Court uphold the constitutionality of flag burning? Didn’t SCALIA write the majority opinion, holding that it is protected under free speech?</p>
<p>And what is a flag? Is it the one made in the USA or China? What do we do with the cocktail wienie toothpicks with flags on them? What about fabric covered In American Flags? If you do something to that, like use it in a protest, is that descacration? What about the guy across the street who hangs it upside down, or backwards? </p>
<p>What about at a picnic with the flag decorating the paper plates? Or table cloth? </p>
<p>If I had a small paper flag which we could download off the web after 911 and it gets all yellow, how do I dispose of it? What about if someone made a flag with 12 stripes or 49 stars to use in a protest, not burning, but say shredding, is that breakng the law? Or taking a bunch of flags from toothpicks and putting them in the trash? Is it different if it is at a protest or at a picnic></p>
<p>Somewhere in my collection of papers I have an article by an American attorney who was teaching a course on American constitutional law in a European university (Greece, I believe) not long after the Supreme Court decision in the flag-burning case.</p>
<p>He was defending that decision, but none of his justifications made sense to the students, who lived in a country with a different view of the law and a different attitude towards individual rights, particularly freedom of speech (not a bad attitude, just different).</p>
<p>He finally came up with an explanation that the students found acceptable, which was, as I remember:</p>
<p>“In America you have the right to be a horse’s a** and burn the flag.”</p>
<p>I’m surprised you San Franciscans aren’t out in force this AM along with the throngs I just saw on TV wanting to burn the Governator. He’s down to a 37% approval rating. Still popular among many I talk to. What do you all think?</p>