The Confederate flag flying over I-95 in Stafford has been the subject of public comments at recent supervisors meetings.
THE LARGE Confederate flag that towers 80 feet above Interstate 95 near U.S. 17 in Falmouth has prompted a group of local residents to demand its removal by the Stafford Board of Supervisors.
Asked to look into the matter, Stafford County Attorney Charles Shumate told board members that there was nothing the county could do about the flag for two reasons: It is located on private property, and flying it is considered an expression of free speech protected by the First Amendment.
Previous protests about the same flag to the Virginia Department of Transportation yielded a similar result. Like it or not, our laws protect private property and free speech, however objectionable that speech may be to those with opposing views.
Stafford lawyer Patricia Healy then filed a zoning complaint with the county, claiming that the Confederate flag is really a “sign” that, due to its height, is out of compliance with zoning ordinances. Healy defines the flag as a sign because the Virginia Flaggers, which owns it and leases the land the flagpole sits on, raises money to erect other Confederate battle flags around the commonwealth.
Healy’s creative argument might have some merit, were it not for the fact that the flag is in actuality indeed a flag, not an image of a flag on a sign, and “flags of any nation, state, or other geopolitical entity” are excluded under the ordinance. Although no longer in existence, the Confederate States of America was a geopolitical entity with its own elected president and constitution.
Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the First Amendment protects the use of a flag for “symbolic expression”—which the Virginia Flaggers insist is an effort to preserve Civil War history, not to spark racial animosity. Whether you believe them or not, the Confederate flag—which has stood in the same location since 2014—is clearly an expression of the group’s beliefs.
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” the high court ruled in Texas v. Johnson, a landmark flag-burning case.
Susan Kosior, another Stafford resident frustrated that the board has refused to do anything about the Confederate flag, got a $200 permit to erect an 80-foot-tall Black Lives Matter flag in her own Ferry Farm backyard in protest. She is still trying to raise the $10,000 needed for the project on GoFundMe.com.
Of course, if Kosior raises the necessary funds and puts up her own Black Lives Matter flag on her private property, the same principles would apply to her as well—even if some members of the community object.
It may come to pass that Fredericksburg-area residents going about their daily business will be subject to the unwelcome sight of not one, but two 80-foot-tall flags representing groups with which they vehemently disagree. But that’s the price we Americans pay for the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech whenever we want to express our own unpopular convictions.
