Flag desecration in the US is not new and 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”.

Flags can be destroyed by burning or can be defaced with slogans or daubed with excrement, etc.

Flags can be walked upon, spat upon, or dragged through the dirt or they can be hung upside down or reversed, and toilet paper and doormats might bear a flag’s image.

Some Common Reasons For Destroying Or Defacing Flags Are:

1. As a protest against a country’s foreign policy.
2. To distance oneself from the foreign or domestic policies of one’s home country.
3. As a protest at the very laws prohibiting the actions in question.
4. As a protest against nationalism.
5. As a protest against the government in power in the country, or against the country’s form of government.
6. A symbolic insult to the people of that country.

So What’s New About Flag Destruction And Defacement?

American flags were vandalized and burned across the U.S. over this year’s Memorial Day weekend and in Wooster, Ohio, around twenty five flags were set on fire early Monday.

In Minneapolis, a fire was set late last week to an American flag hanging outside a Marine veteran’s home.

In Portland, Ore., Christian Ashby and his wife awoke Sunday to find their American flag torn down, covered in obscenities and burned outside their home.

And although the stories go on, three things about this appear to be very different to me.

Firstly the flags were burned anonymously which seems new.

Secondly, other people’s flags were burned without their permission.

Thirdly, and perhaps most ominously, a check of the various newspaper talkbacks revealed that many, albeit a minority of Americans, expressed an understanding and even a sympathy to the flag burnings.

Not Just In The USA

A Wikipedia link about flag burning and defacing describes in great detail where and when the events have occurred and is well worth checking out.

Is Flag Desecration Legal In The U.S.?

"Yes“,

In 28 Jun 2006 s constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration died in a Senate cliffhanger and it was just a single vote short of the support needed to send it to the states for ratification a week before that year’s Independence Day.

The 66-34 tally in favor of the amendment was just one less than the two-thirds required.