OKLAHOMA CITY — Reading a story out of Albany, Oregon today about an apartment complex banning the American flag (and other flags, like those promoting sports teams) makes me wonder if such a situation could happen here.

Since 9/11, these sorts of stories have popped up a couple of times a year. However, this case in Albany, Oregon is particularly draconian.

The story started off with Jim Clausen, a resident at the Oaks apartment complex. He has an American flag on his motorcycle and truck and has a son in the military. He told KATU TV that he displays the flags out of support of his son and all those Americans who have died serving this country. Yet, he was told to take the flags off his vehicles. Outraged, he contacted the Albany Democrat Herald newspaper and all the local media was soon looking into it.

Sharron White told KATU that the apartment manager said she was told  if she was allowed to fly the “Somebody might be offended,” she said. White responded to the manager that “They’ll just have to get over it.”

Indeed!

And the anti-American managers of this apartment complex were ducking the media once Clausen’s story got their attention.

“I’m not going to answer any questions,” replied a sullen woman interviewed at the Oaks management office.

One older woman, an Oaks tenant, was shown in the KATU report pulling some luggage with an American flag attached to it.  ”Am I going to be confronted by a manager about this?” she asked the reporter.

The ACLU claims the tenants are not having their rights violated by the flag ban because the apartment complex is private property.

However, the ACLU does not have the final say in the matter. Like it or not, the Oaks management is in the wrong in this case, not because, well, this is America, for pete’s sake, but because in 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005 into law. This (and the Constitution, presumably) protects people like Jim Clausen and the other residents at the Oaks apartments and renters around the country.

It states: A condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.

However, after reading the stories in the Albany paper (and an editorial that appeared yesterday) make it clear that the management is not aware of this law.

Notes the editorial board at the Albany Democrat Herald: “(F)lags are rarely a cause of interpersonal friction. Bumper stickers are far more provocative because they often carry statements with which people may feel honor-bound to express their disapproval.

And while flags are prohibited in the parking bays of the Oaks Apartments, what would it say or do about bumper stickers in the shape and colors of the Stars and Stripes?

How about flags inside cars, in the back window, for instance?

One has to sympathize with apartment managers in an increasingly litigious age, where people quickly take umbrage for any reason or no reason at all. But once you respond to these challenges with a rule that in an American town it’s against the rules to display the American flag on your own motorcycle or your own car, you have gone too far.”

The Oaks has gone too far and we at Oklahoma Watchdog hope the management of apartment complexes throughout Oklahoma and the nation will take note.

Copyright 2009 Oklahoma Watchdog