Lasorda Speaks for Constitutional Amendment to Ban Flag Desecration

With Dodger General Manager Tommy Lasorda as a star witness, the Senate on Wednesday spotlighted its latest effort--and perhaps the most likely to succeed--to amend the Constitution to ban desecration of the U.S. flag.

Appearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Lasorda recalled a 1976 incident at Dodger Stadium during which Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday snatched a flag from two protesters who had doused it with lighter fluid and were prepared to ignite it.

Calling it “one of the most heroic acts ever to take place on the field during a major league baseball game,” Lasorda testified that he was equally struck by the response of the fans, who stood up spontaneously and sang “God Bless America.”

Seeking to tap into that emotion, several senators are pressing their colleagues to adopt a flag-desecration amendment this fall and send it to the states for ratification. The days of flag-burning as a popular protest may have faded, but proponents said that even the occasional defacement justifies the amendment. The issue has soared to the top of the agenda for many conservatives.

Despite failed past attempts, many lawmakers believe that this could be the year Congress acts, in part because they have rephrased the amendment to overcome past objections. The amendment passed the House, 310 to 114, last year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed it June 24. Timing will be key, strategists said, with Senate Republican leaders purposely holding off a vote until near election day so that senators on the November ballot might feel pressure to cast a patriotic vote.

Although flag desecration is down there with kicking kittens in public acceptance and banning the practice has deep resonance, the issue has proved to be a legal thicket. Opponents argue that the effort, while well intentioned, runs counter to 1st Amendment protection of speech and thereby violates the very meaning of the flag.

The Supreme Court, interpreting flag desecration as a symbolic form of speech, invalidated past attempts by Congress and individual states to ban the practice. These rebuffs sparked the move for an amendment that would give Congress constitutional permission to prohibit the practice.

Previous proposals fell short of achieving the necessary two-thirds support in both the House and Senate for such a change in the Constitution. This time around, some hurdles already have been cleared.

A proposed amendment that almost passed in 1995 would have given both Congress and states the right to pass laws specifically outlawing flag desecration. But foes persuasively argued that the result could be a confusing jumble of statutes with differing definitions and penalties.

The current amendment--only 17 words long--would empower only Congress to pass such a law.

With a handful of senators holding the balance, backers of what would be the Constitution’s 28th Amendment are lobbying hard. They are targeting senators up for reelection who have not endorsed the effort--such as Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.), whose GOP challenger has publicly criticized her for past opposition to flag desecration measures.

So delicate is the issue that Moseley-Braun felt compelled to deliver a Memorial Day speech in which she recalled the wartime patriotism of her father and grandfather and reaffirmed her love of country and flag.

Critics have argued that their patriotism compels them to oppose an amendment that they say would chip away at a form of political protest. They also warn that passing the amendment could prompt a surge in flag-burnings by drawing so much attention to the act.

While Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is a co-sponsor of the amendment, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is in the same camp as the White House, which says that it abhors flag burning but believes Congress ought to avoid the drastic step of amending the Constitution to address the matter.

At Wednesday’s hearing, designed to highlight the issue in advance of a Senate vote, Lasorda was put on the spot by one critic, Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who asked the Dodger official whether he also would seek to make defacement of the Bill of Rights a criminal offense.

“When we walk by a copy of the Bill of Rights, we don’t stand at attention,” responded Lasorda, who joined witnesses backing the amendment as varied as a Harvard law professor, a disabled veteran and television actor John Schneider of “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

The witnesses also grappled with this concern: How to properly define what is a flag and what is defacement in a country that prints American flags on everything from napkins to neckties.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who opposes the amendment, said his neighbors might be accused of defacement for wearing Bermuda shorts sporting Stars and Stripes while cutting the lawn.

But backers of the amendment said that such arguments are meant to distract. The focus, they declared, should be on those who rip, burn, cut and otherwise deface Betsy Ross’s handiwork--not at veterans who properly burn flags to dispose of them or those who serve food on a tablecloth depicting the flag.

Should the amendment clear the Senate, approval by three-quarters of the states, or 38, would be needed to ratify it. Over the years, all but one of the 50 state legislatures have passed resolutions backing such an amendment.

The Times’ Web site has audio of the ACLU’s position on the proposed constitutional amendment and of Rick Monday’s recollections of the 1976 attempted flag burning. Go to:

https://www.latimes.com/flag