It seems that desecration of the national flag is permitted to a certain extent - you can burn it in protest, after all, right? - but are people allowed to edit the U.S. flag to combine the United States flag with that of other countries’, just for entertainment’s sake?
(So for instance, if for parody’s sake, someone stitched half of the Australian flag and half of the American flag together to create a fictional U.S.-Australian nation, or half of the Canadian flag and American flag to create a fictional North American nation.)
There is a US Flag Code which has the status of law but, for constitutional reasons, can be enforced with penal sanctions (e.g. fines or imprisonment).
The code does say that mark, insignia, letter, word, number, figure, or drawing of any kind should be placed on it or attached to the flag. So you shouldn’t, e.g., place a Canadian maple leaf in the centre of the flat, or a white centre bar with such a maple leaf.
On the other hand, you could argue that a banner is not a US flag unless it contains the 50 stars, the 13 stripes, etc, . So if you create a banner which contains elements of the US flag with other elements, that’s not a US flag. The flag code itself applies to any flag containing all or part of the colours, stars, stripe, etc of the “official” US flag, and which is “purporting to be” the flag of the US. It would seem that a flag which combines elements of the US flag and the flag of Canada to depict the flag of a fictional North American state embracing the US and Canada is not “purporting to be” the US flag, and is not covered by the Flag Code.
Back when the U.S. was preparing for its bicentennial (1976), many people came up with alternate versions of the flag. Some were quite imaginative, and some were more than a little unpatriotic. I don’t think any laws were broken.
I assume you meant “cannot be enforced”.
There’s also a missing “no” before “mark, insignia,” etc.
Ah, I remember in the late 60’s seeing a US flag with the stars in the blue field rearranged into a peace symbol. I didn’t count but I’d bet there were less than 50 of them too. No big hoo hoo.
Rearranging the flag for entertainment’s sake is art - free speech. Have at it.
