At their annual convention, members of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) approved a resolution that they hope will send a message of "constitutional sanity" to congressional proponents of legislation to punish people who desecrate the American flag.

"The membership of AEJMC believes such a law would directly conflict with guarantees of free expression in the U.S. Constitution," the AEJMC resolution says. "Because of the significant constitutional issues involved, it is necessary to reaffirm and reassert [our] opposition to any efforts to amend the Constitution to make it a federal crime to burn or otherwise desecrate the American flag."

The legislation, which has been pending on Capitol Hill for years, would make it a federal offense to desecrate the U.S. flag. Constitutional scholars, journalism and mass communication professors, journalists and attorneys groups and even war veterans have condemned politicians' efforts to ban flag-burning.

There were about five cases of flag-burnings in political or other protest in 1998, according to an Arizona-based group that opposes the anti-flag-desecration efforts.

"It is clear to those of us who teach and study journalism and mass communication that efforts on Capitol Hill to amend First Amendment free expression guarantees and to 'protect' the American flag are constitutionally misguided," said Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver, president of the 3,300-member group of college and university professors.

Calling the efforts to pass a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning "a real danger to our fundamental constitutional guarantees," Kopenhaver called on members of Congress to reject the so-called "flag-burning amendment."

"Lawmakers should be very aware that we cannot protect our basic freedoms by placing limits on them," Kopenhaver said. "The American flag symbolizes the very freedoms that will be damaged if the First Amendment is weakened by an amendment to outlaw flag desecration."

Proponents of the law say it is needed to protect the American symbol from disrespect. But opponents argue that the law would weaken precisely the most important liberties that the American flag represents.

"So-called 'patriotic' groups have spent millions of dollars trying to get Congress to do something that has never been accomplished by armed enemies, riots, mayhem or warfare: restrict Americans' freedom of thought and expression by amending the First Amendment to the Constitution," observed Ted Pease, a professor at Utah State University who helped write the previous AEJMC resolution opposing flag-burning laws.

The House of Representatives passed its version of a law making flag desecration a felony in 1997. The companion Senate version has since stalled three votes short of passage, but its proponents, led by Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, have vowed to continue efforts to pass the law.

In its 1997 message to Congress, the journalism professors group said,

"However offensive an act of personal expression may be to some, unless such acts endanger others, legislating limits on free expression poses a much greater danger to society and its Constitutional guarantees."