Flag Defacement
Your article on the May Day parade in Red Square (“Thousands Jeer Moscow Leaders,” front page, May 2) provided renewed hope that the Russian people will be able to win meaningful freedom of speech. One part of the report, however, was astounding.
Your reporter wrote: “One Soviet marcher also carried a Soviet flag with the hammer and sickle cut out as a symbol of his repudiation of Soviet rule.” Apparently this marcher was not arrested. Yet, if he came to this country and wanted to protest, and he burned an American flag as his symbolic expression of something, our Congress and President would like to see to it that he is punished.
Doesn’t this article rather dramatically show that defacement of national flags is symbolic expression? We applaud the Soviet marcher because he is saying something, symbolically, of which we approve. However, we seem to dislike burning of the American flag because we don’t like what the protester is saying, symbolically.
Thus, it is clear that our new anti-flag burning law is attempting to control the content of symbolic expression. If Congress passes and the states ratify a constitutional amendment allowing the state and federal governments to outlaw defacement of our flag, then in at least one area of symbolic speech the Russian people will have greater rights than we. Is this what we want?
SCOTT J. TEPPER
Los Angeles
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