Before September 11, I knew my position on displaying the American flag. Following the events of September 11, I realized my position was less resolute than I had imagined.
In the past months at our family's neighborhood school, Dawes Elementary, a controversy has simmered concerning the Boy Scouts' decision to bar homosexuals from leadership. The Dawes P.T.A., after numerous lively meetings, published a statement in our school newsletter denouncing the Scouts' decision and urging the Dawes community to counter "hate" and "discrimination" generally. A school family with three children (on friendly terms with our family) belatedly jumped into the controversy by circulating an August letter. They objected to the P.T.A. promoting a position that was in conflict with their church's convictions regarding homosexuality.
Numerous discussions--over coffee and dinner and on sidewalks--arose between us and other Dawes friends. Some made free to depict the protesting family as cranks or bigots. In the discussions I always raised a finger and said piously, "If I don't share their views, I at least support their right to object on grounds of faith. If, in some imaginary situation, for some strange reason, there would be a surge of American patriotism, and the P.T.A. decreed that all Dawes families fly the flag, we too would be moved to object, because we couldn't do that." These pronouncements always made me feel good; at least Lee and I remembered the righteousness of nonconformity--even if for me it was lodged somewhere back in 1969 when I wore a "Work for Peace" button garnered from somebody's activist older brother.
A week after yet another dinner party pronouncement on conscientious objection, the terrorists attacked. The next day, flags began to appear on our block and around our neighborhood. Homes and lapels (even some whose owners I had pegged as peaceniks like us) appeared decked with the national colors. While I was nagged with a feeling that our home could soon stand out as our block's only flag-free dwelling, I knew we would not fly the flag.
A few days later, newscasters reported favorably that some children in Chicago-area schools were being encouraged to wear red, white, and blue. Something close to my theoretical moral dilemma was coming to pass. Yet I knew that if our children were asked to wear the colors to school, we would explain our position to the boys and decline. I still felt a satisfaction in knowing that on this one, we would have to stick out as different, even in our school community where we ordinarily feel like insiders.
Before long, though, a scenario occurred to me in which such a decision would present me with a struggle. In the week of September 11, our three boys played something like seven soccer games in all. It occurred to me, in the atmosphere permeating those days, that one of their teams might decide to sport the colors on their uniform or on an armband. Rather than feeling nobly capable of resisting the request, I dreaded such a possibility. It would be hard for the boys to boycott a team gesture, of course. But I realized that I, too, would hate to do it. My strong desire to fit in among those soccer families (some of them adept at marginalizing others as it is) threw my true colors into obscurity.
No such action has been proposed by any team--so far. But I suspect that in the coming months, the necessity of facing such challenges, rather than merely imagining them, will rightly test our convictions. I hope I have the courage of those maligned parents at Dawes, who risked their comfort on the grounds of faith.
--Susan Fisher Miller is a part-time college teacher, house mom and soccer mom living in Evanston IL. She and her husband, Lee, parent three sons. This essay was prepared for the annual retreat of the Evanston Mennonite Fellowship, October 2-4, 2001.
Published SFP: 10/10/01
Comments about this article may be e-mailed to: John Fisher, johnjf@goshen.edu
HTML editing by Lon Sherer, lonhs@goshen.edu
SFP Homepage