Panel Hears Impassioned Pleas Over Flag-Burning Amendment

Impassioned pleas for a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration were met Thursday with equally passionate warnings that the proposed amendment is a dangerous reaction and what one senator called “a crass competition about who loves the flag more.”

The chairman of the subcommittee that heard testimony on the amendment, which has been endorsed by President Bush, urged caution.

“The Constitution . . . is fragile and can be wounded by the votes of legislators caught up in the emotional whirlwinds of the moment,” said Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of the civil and constitutional rights subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

However, House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) and Rep. G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.) asked the panel to approve the constitutional amendment as a remedy to the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that flag burning is protected as free speech.

“This is what the people want, and if we don’t do something about it, they’re going to do something about it. They’re going to get it one way or another,” said Montgomery, who heads the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

But the panel, which one Republican called a “graveyard for legislation,” seemed inclined toward less drastic approaches. Several members seemed to lean toward a statute sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.).

Biden told the panel that his statute would pass constitutional muster because it prohibits flag desecration but makes no reference to the impact of the desecration. One reason the Supreme Court struck down the Texas law, according to Biden, was that the law prohibited flag desecration that “will seriously offend one or more persons. . . .”

However, Michel said that Biden’s statute would not work and would only prolong the debate by throwing the issue back to the courts.

“There is no quick legislative fix on this issue,” Michel told the panel. “Either we amend the Constitution--as grave and complicated an undertaking as that is--or else we let the decision stand. There is no middle ground.”