Allow’s begin with the basics: Adolfo Martinez is not a wonderful individual, from the noise of points.
Many people that melt flags of any kind of type aren’t. In Martinez’s instance, the prior offender was charged and convicted of taking down an LGBT flag throughout “satisfaction” month from a liberal church churchgoers in Ames, Iowa. According to KCCI , back in 2019, he was found guilty of hate criminal activity arson, third-degree harassment, and negligent use of fire, with an extra sentence added on for his condition as a regular offender– 16 years behind bars in total amount.
If this is a hate criminal activity not worthy of security under the First Modification to the Constitution, then, why should shedding the American flag be?
That’s what Head Of State Donald Trump is asking. On Monday, he signed an order utilizing existing laws to prosecute those who burn Old Glory, claiming that the act is “computed to daunt and intimidate violence” versus others.
“The American flag is one of the most sacred and cherished sign of the USA of America, and desecrating it is distinctively and inherently offensive and intriguing,” a White House reality sheet on the order read.
“It is a statement of contempt and hostility towards our Nation, and an act made use of by teams of international nationals calculated to daunt and endanger violence against Americans.”
For example: “Current demonstrations, including those in Los Angeles in June 2025, have featured flag melting alongside violent acts and other conduct intimidating public safety.”
The order permits the united state attorney general to “strongly prosecute” those that burn or desecrate the American flag, Reuters reported.
Do you concur with Trump on the concern of melting the American flag?
“If you burn a flag, you get one year behind bars, no early exits, no nothing,” Trump claimed during an Oval Office presser.
In 1989, the Supreme Court kept in Texas v. Johnson that shedding or various other desecration of the American flag– which was prosecutable in most states at the time– was complimentary speech under the First Change, albeit by a slim 5 – 4 vote.
The situation originated from costs submitted against Gregory Lee Johnson, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, who burned a flag outside the 1984 Republican Politician National Convention in Dallas, Texas, and was charged and convicted under the state’s desecration laws, punished to a year in prison and $ 2, 000 in fines, according to constitutional legislation database Oyez
The choice noted both that the meaningful conduct of flag-burning was safeguarded under the First Amendment which state authorities did not have the authority to assign specific slim icons for defense, saying that” [i] f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Federal government might not restrict the expression of an idea simply due to the fact that culture discovers the concept itself offensive or disagreeable.”
Nevertheless, the White Home’s fact-sheet states that what the exec order intends to prosecute is flag-burning indicated to intimidate others: “The High court has actually never held that flag desecration carried out in a manner that is most likely to incite unavoidable criminal action or act as a form of ‘combating words’ is constitutionally secured.”
If that sounds like attempting to do an end-run around Texas v. Johnson, so is efficiently securing LGBT individuals by calling Martinez a hate criminal for shedding the rainbow flag.
Mr. Martinez, like Mr. Johnson, is not a specifically nice person. The guy, 30 at the time of his sentence, tore down the rainbow flag outside the Ames United Church of Christ after obtaining tossed out of a strip club close to the church for bugging a transgender patron. He took the banner back to the club’s parking lot and established it aflame with lighter liquid, The Washington Post reported.
Neither was he contrite: “He claimed he wishes to ‘reduce us out of the land of the living,'” claimed Priest Eileen Gebbie of the church. Nor was his actions throughout his criminal procedures especially stellar, either. From the Blog post:
Throughout the trial, Gebbie said Maritnez would reference her straight, in some cases defining her look, various other times stating his activities weren’t about her, yet attesting his idea that as a lesbian, she was a trouble.
As he was diverted after sentencing, Martinez addressed her one last time.
“I’ll see you when I venture out,” he claimed.
It’s right here worth mentioning two things.
First, hate criminal activity legislations are abnormally arbitrary points. Equally as one person’s freedom fighter is one more’s terrorist, so is one person’s secured class one more’s target of free speech. The degree of the danger caused by shedding a LGBT flag is the same as that when the activity is done in a minatory style toward Americans– or a particular course of them, as current flag-burnings have been.
And if you think the genuine criminal activity below is burning down somebody else’s building, think about that nobody troubled to prosecute anybody involved in this 2024 flag-burning that entailed a taxpayer-owned flag outside of Washington, D.C.’s Union Terminal:
One of the American Flags which hung earlier in Front of Union Terminal, being covered in Lighter-Fluid then shed by Hamas Advocates and Communists. pic.twitter.com/nDWh 5 tWUwT
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 24, 2024
Second, if you assume Martinez is an obnoxious personality, Gregory Lee Johnson was just as toxic. From a 2006 item from Geov Parrish, one more contemporary of Johnson’s in the Texas-area activism scene, released in the Seattle Weekly , the left-wing alternative paper in a city that, offered its social cant, should not also need one : “a ridiculous young hair transplanted New Yorker of concerning my age … who ‘d turn up at every regional presentation with a bloody, severed pig’s head (tendrils still tracking along) that he would certainly drag along on a leash and collar while shouting anti-imperialist slogans; the pig, naturally, was the United States. Background does not tape the amount of observers were moved to cutting edge activity therefore, but it didn’t impress many of his fellow activists. Intense humiliation was a lot more like it.”
As a person that really feels that the enforced event of “pride” month is biased versus Christians who hold to biblical morality, I do not recognize if I might generate better words for how I feel concerning what Mr. Martinez did than “severe shame.” History does not record the amount of observers, such as they might be, were transferred to truly repent as a result, although it’s relatively simple to presume; for wagering kinds, I would certainly state the over-under is 0. 5 and, if I were actually enabled to wager on it, I would certainly place my life cost savings on the under.
But 16 years behind bars for it?
Trump asked for one year in the penitentiary for melting the American flag in a style that intimidates others– and instantly, the left is losing it.
This guy truly does dislike the Constitution and Free Speech. Many unconstitutional orders https://t.co/ 2 Ywh 1 OpMwJ
— KryTierEon (@KryTierEon) August 25, 2025
It’s one or the various other, however. The LGBT flag– perhaps a less-protected symbol, given that it has no nationwide relevance and is of lately developed provenance– must arguably bring less protections than the American flag, specifically considered that what it upholds directly spits in the face of Judeo-Christians that comply with any kind of sort of small-O orthodox sights on scriptural sexuality.
Yet that’s prospering of ourselves. Point is: One or the other, leftists. Adolfo Martinez goes totally free or Gregory Lee Johnson and his ilk report to prison posthaste. If you intend to take this set to the High court, we’re more than satisfied to challenge Mr. Martinez’s conviction not just on Eighth Change grounds of too much punishment , but under the same free speech provision shedding the flag is allegedly secured under.
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