Burning the American Flag

[Alex Bragi]

I'd like to point out that flag burning would not be affecting someone physically say the way (just an example) hordes of people would be attempting to gather at a funeral that they are not directly related to… (ie press/admirers/fans).

The new law has absolutely nothing to do with press, admirers or fans, or accessing funerals, and everything to do with low life Fred Phelps and his ilk. Yes, "Reverend" Fred Phelps, also know as Fred 'I hate fags' Phelps, who feels that, no matter how offensive and distasteful it may be to others, it's his 'right' to protest and at gay and military funerals.

Thankfully, he never was attracting huge hordes of followers at funerals. He wasn't destroying any property. He wasn't getting in the way of anyone else, or even preventing anyone from conducting a funeral. In fact, the only thing he was doing was exercising his right to freedom of expression and his right to protest.

We don't (or at leasted we haven't so far) amend(ed) the Constitution to force people to "have a little respect". Furthermore, I'm sure that some people in the 60's and 70's thought that burning bras in protest was "offensive". …

Hasn't Fred, effectively, been forced to 'have a little respect"?

I think it's trivialising the whole issue to compare a nation's flag with a woman's bra. I reiterate, a flag is a symbol of a nation and its people, a bra is not.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.

There's certainly an incredible irony is that, isn't there?