Judge's Flag-Kissing Oath and the Threat of Compulsion

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 30, 1900

Judge's Flag-Kissing Oath and the Threat of Compulsion

A JUDGE in an Ohio court the other day declared: “I shall procure an American flag, and every male candidate for citizenship [by naturalization] will have to kneel and kiss its folds.” That approaches very near to the requiring of an act of worship. From the progress that has already been made in that direction, it may be expected that, before very long, whoever does not take off his hat in the presence of the American flag, or in the hearing of a national air, will be mobbed in the interests of “patriotism.”