Burning the american flag is illegal unless it is done in a certain ceremony(as stated earlier).My mom and a friend of hers in a quilt group just got done repairing 13 flags and they had very strict certain guidelines they had to follow for the repairs.Anybody that burns the flag should be as stated earlier wrapped up in it first.Using the term freedom of expression to "hide" behind this kind of activity is a load of crap IMO.Them telling us to make laws against blasphemy,my reply would be KMA.You can bet they would say derogatory remarks about us and that would be ok by them.
Sorry but it is NOT illegal to burn our or any flag in the USA
United States
The
flag of the United States is sometimes symbolically burned, often in protest of the policies of the American government, both within the country and abroad. The
United States Supreme Court in
Texas v. Johnson, 491
U.S. 397 (1989), and reaffirmed in
U.S. v. Eichman, 496
U.S. 310 (1990), has ruled that due to the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is unconstitutional for a government (whether federal, state, or municipality) to prohibit the desecration of a flag, due to its status as "
symbolic speech." However,
content-neutral restrictions may still be imposed to regulate the time, place, and manner of such expression.
In 1862, during the Union army's occupation of
New Orleans in the
American Civil War, the military governor,
Benjamin Franklin Butler, sentenced
William B. Mumford to death for removing an American flag. In 1864
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote the poem
Barbara Frietchie, which told of a (probably fictional) incident in which
Confederate soldiers were deterred from defacing an American flag. The poem contains the famous lines:
"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said.
During the United States involvement in the
Vietnam War American flags were sometimes burned during war protest demonstrations.
[68]
After the
Johnson and
Eichman decisions, several flag burning amendments to the
Constitution were proposed. On 22 June 2005, a
Flag Desecration Amendment was passed by the
House with the needed two-thirds majority. On 27 June 2006, another attempt to pass a ban on flag burning was rejected by the
Senate in a close vote of 65 in favor, 34 opposed, one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to send the amendment to be voted on by the states.
[69]
Flying an American flag upside down is not necessarily meant as political protest. The practice has its origin in a distress signal; displaying a flag in this manner is "a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property";
[70] it has been used by extension to make a statement about distress in civic, political, or other areas. Upside-down flying of the flag was ruled constitutional in
Spence v. Washington, a 1974 Supreme Court ruling.
[71]
Actions portraying the flag being flown upside down can be witnessed through American rock band
Rage Against The Machine at the Democratic Convention in 2000.
[72]
