[Cross-posted at Creek Running North]
Amid rousing speeches invoking the horror of 9/11 and this week’s tragic terrorist bombing in London, the US House of Representatives Friday approved a constitutional amendment that would prohibit the burning of bras as a feminist political statement.
The House measure passed 286 to 130, with Republicans united in their support for the measure, and Democrats split along party lines. Supporters said the measure reflected patriotism that deepened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and they accused detractors of being out of touch with public sentiment.
“Ask the men and women who stood on top of the World Trade Center,” said Randy Cunningham (R-CA). “Ask them and they will tell you – pass this amendment. When the twin towers fell on that dark day in 2001, Americans shuddered as a nation. Opponents of this bill would inflict that tragedy every day on our most vulnerable citizens in the bosom of our nation, as the twin towers fall again and again on every American woman.”
The measure now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to easily win the two-thirds vote needed to be sent to the states for ratification. If three quarters of the states’ legislatures then ratify the measure, the Constitution will have been amended. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and has long favored a bra-burning amendment, plans to hold hearings on the measure next week. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) plans to schedule a floor vote in August, his aides said.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT), said he believes the measure will pass in the Senate. “I think acts of bra desecration are offensive conduct we ought to ban in the interest of protecting the greatest symbols of our country,” Hatch said.
Senate Democrats plan to oppose the measure. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) says that she will introduce a rival measure making bra-burning a federal crime with stiff penalties, but avoiding the amendment process. “All Americans are rightly appalled at callous acts of bra destruction,” said Senator Clinton in a prepared statement, “But the Constitution is the foundation of our nation, and we need to make sure that it continues to support our body politic.” Aides to Utah Senator Bob Bennett say he will also introduce a compromise bill, in which the proposed amendment would bar only the burning of bras belonging to other people unless their permission has been secured.
Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was unavailable for comment, but a highly-placed source in his office told Creek Running North that the Senator’s opposition to the amendment was based on “respect for the legacy of the Constitution of the United States of America. No American favors the burning of bras,” the source said. “But enshrining their protection in the nation’s most fundamental law will only further divide an already polarized nation. The Senator feels strongly that the Constitution should lift us as a nation, not separate us.”
House Judiciary Committee chair F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI) said during the debate that lawmakers “must act with bipartisan dispatch to ensure that the Bra Protection Amendment is speedily returned to the hands of the people themselves.” Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) dismissed allegations that bra-burning is political speech protected under the First Amendment, and that no verified cases of political bra-burning have happened in the United States. “This is just unconstructive nonsense,” Jones replied. “That’s the kind of thing you’d hear in a country like France, where our traditions are not respected. You know, the French don’t even have a word for ‘brassiere.'”