Compulsory Patriotism at Yankee Stadium
Moments before they play the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America at Yankee Stadium, according to a New York Times story on this day, all the ushers, security guards, and police officers turn their backs on the American flag, face the crowd, and order people not to move. It is nothing less than compulsory patriotism.
Additionally, in the lower deck, guards connect chains at the end of each row to keep people from moving into the aisles. But if you are having a personal emergency, the guards will let you move.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Major League Baseball officials directed all teams to play God Bless America before the bottom of the seventh inning at each game. (So much for Take Me Out to the Ball Game.) MLB officials eased up on the rule within a year, but the New York Yankees continued to play God Bless America, with the accompanying restrictions, into 2007.
To date, there have been no know cases of people being arrested or otherwise punished for trying to move (e.g., get another beer) during the restricted times. Art Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a statement saying that the Yankees, as a private organization, had a right to promote patriotism as they saw fit. But he warned about “enforced conformity” on a “captive audience.” The NYCLU stood ready to take legal action if anyone was arrested for disobeying the no-movement rule.
The most famous episode of compulsory patriotism in American history involved state laws that required public school students to salute the flag each morning when school began. These laws proliferated in the late 1930s, as World War II approached. The laws were challenged by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a persecuted religious sect at that time. On June 14, 1943 the Supreme Court declared the West Virginia flag salute law unconstitutional on the grounds that the government cannot “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Learn more about the historic West Virginia v. Barnette case.
Learn more about the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ contributions to civil liberties: Shawn Francis Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (2000)