OPINION:
Shortly after my husband was killed in action in Afghanistan, I sat at his gravesite surrounded by friends, family and his Navy SEAL teammates, catatonic. The loss was overwhelming, the pain unmanageable. As I watched my future being lowered into the ground, Jacques’ fellow SEALs carefully lifted the American Flag draped across his casket. They folded it reverently, then one of them presented it to me, holding it gently in white gloves.
“This flag represents the country your husband died protecting,” he said to me softly. The words may have been whispered, but their meaning was thunderous.
This is why I’m against kneeling before our flag during the playing of the national anthem. I feel strongly that this is not the right place or time to express displeasure, or the need for change. However, I also recognize that the best aspects of our country — the very rights my husband died to secure — are our freedom of speech, self-expression, and the right to see things differently. So while I disagree with those who choose to take a knee during the national anthem, I recognize and respect their right to do so.
What saddens me is how those who don’t agree with this form of protest seem to be bullied for expressing an opposing opinion. For using that same freedom of speech to communicate the respect they have for the flag. To say, “We Stand.” Too often, we are castigated and marked as racist, or have other hurtful, untrue insults hurled in our direction for showing that support. It’s troubling how others don’t want to give the same rights to those who chose to stand without accusing them of not supporting change.
It’s an all-too-common hypocrisy that is playing out in our society time and time again. If you say “Blue Lives Matter,” or “All Lives Matter,” certain people want to twist that into meaning Black lives don’t matter. Too often today, people only want it one way: Their way. And that’s not capturing the spirit or the letter of the First Amendment. We don’t have to agree; we do have to have the right to express ourselves.
Personally, I think that kneeling before our flag and anthem is not only disrespectful to the men and women who gave their lives for what that flag represents, but also to the widows, parents and children who were handed folded flags beside a freshly dug grave. I don’t wish that that pain or loss on anyone, but I don’t believe you can truly understand my feelings on kneeling if you haven’t been handed a flag in this manner.
That flag represents America, and everyone in it. Not your political affiliation, not the color of your skin, but our country, the United States of America. The good and the bad. The country that we all choose to live in, and until recently was considered the best country in the world by those who lived there.
I only kneel before my Lord and Savior, and will always stand for our flag and anthem. I know the sacrifice my husband and thousands more have made for this country and that flag. But I would be a hypocrite if I said everyone must stand or see it my way. My only ask is that the other side afford me the same courtesy.
• Char Fontan Westfall is author of “A Beautiful Tragedy: A Navy SEAL Widow’s Permission to Grieve and a Prescription for Hope” (Ballast Books).
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