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Proposal:
Intentional acts to destroy, damage, or mutilate the national flag or any state flag in public should be prohibited as a misdemeanor.
When a flag need to be retired, a dignified burning of the flag should be conducted by government officials from any level of government with an appropriate and brief ceremony.
Intent:
To prohibit the violence to a national or state flag as an expression of discontent because it is not peaceful conduct.
Displaying the flag inverted or rotated is non-violent and should be allowed.
Discussion:
A country’s flag is the symbol for the country, its people, and culture. To intentionally disrespect or to make a public show of contempt for the flag is not a peaceful way to communicate and should not be protected by the right to honest and peaceful communication.
Burning or mutilating the national flag or any state flag is violent behavior. It’s not “like” violent behavior, it actually is violent behavior, in the sense of intentional damage with force. It is by definition not peaceful behavior.
If a person is protesting against a law, court ruling, or any official or unofficial act, the protest should not include a public display of contempt for the national flag or any state flag. This is because protest is an important part of freedom which is protected by soldiers, government workers, and civilians who rally around the same flag. To burn that flag is to disrespect their efforts and sacrifices to protect the freedom the flag represents. Our enemies burn our flag in contempt, our own people should never do that. A person can easily make any political point without burning or mutilating a flag, so the prohibition on that is not a significant constraint on speech.
If a protester damages or burns their own property, such as a sign with their own name or photo on it, they may have the freedom to do that as long as that property is not the national or state flag or not painted as the national or state flag. That’s because, in contrast to someone’s own property which is only meaningful to them, the national flag is meaningful to everyone and the state flag is meaningful to everyone in that state or who has ties to that state. The flags are not mere private property, they are everyone’s symbols.
The following suggestion is not intended to be a required behavior but just to make a point of how easy it is to protest without flag burning: When a person wants to protest the government’s words or actions, instead of burning a flag with a negative message, a person could hold up and celebrate the flag to protest with the opposite positive message. For example, instead of burning a flag and saying “recent government actions were illegal and immoral and we hate it and we hate the flag and our country is the worst” a person can wave the flag and say “recent government actions were illegal and immoral and we deserve better than that and we demand better than that to make our country great”.
Displaying the flag inverted (“upside down”) is a symbol of distress and is not a violent action. It should be allowed as a call for help in battle, or a disaster, or as a form of protest. For flags that have a horizontal line of symmetry, there is not an inverted appearance so those flags might be displayed rotated at a 90 degree angle or some other angle as symbol of distress or protest.
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