FRASER TWP, MI — Driving down a busy road in rural Bay County, you may be struck by a provocative flag waving in the wind from one house’s flagpole.
“F*** Biden” the black, red, and white flag proclaims, with “And f*** you for voting for him!” emblazoned beneath it. Above it flies the more familiar yellow Gadsden, or “Don’t tread on me,” flag.
Jared R. Snyder, the 25-year-old man flying the divisive flags in front of his Fraser Township home, says he is doing so to advocate for free speech and voice his discontent with the current administration of President Joseph R. Biden, though he was not a supporter of ex-President Donald J. Trump.
“It’s just a freedom of speech thing for me,” Snyder told MLive on Tuesday, Feb. 9. “I’m not going after a race, ethnicity, sexual orientation — nothing. I’m simply voicing my opinion that I’m not happy with our president. I’m not happy that all my friends who work on the (Keystone XL oil) pipeline are now laid off due to decisions the president made.”
Bay County Sheriff Troy R. Cunningham said his agency has received calls complaining about the flags.
“We’re aware of several flags and signs throughout our community that might not be in agreement with everyone, but everyone has the right to express themselves under the First Amendment,” he said.
Fraser Township Supervisor Mark Galus said he does not approve of the flag’s language and has received four or five complaints from residents. When he arrived at work on Monday, Feb. 8, Galus called Undersheriff Chris Mausolf to see if there were any legal recourse.
“He more or less came back and told me there is nothing we can do as far as ordinances or anything like that,” Galus said. “It’s just ridiculous. It’s crazy. I wouldn’t mind it, (but) it’s just the vulgarity that’s on it.”
Galus said some of the complaints he’s received have been from area residents with kids and grandkids who they don’t want to see the flags.
“If there were a way of doing it through the township, we’d take action,” he said. “If we could, we would, but our hands are tied. It’s terrible.”
Snyder bought the Biden-specific flag on Amazon, saying he kind of did so as a joke. He raised it up the pole on Saturday, Feb. 6, he said.
“The funny part is, everyone is assuming I’m just some big, huge Trump supporter and all that,” Snyder said. “To blow everyone’s minds, I did not vote for Trump or Biden.”
Snyder identifies politically as Libertarian but declined to say if he voted for 2020 Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen. He added he’s not surprised some people don’t like the flag.
“I just feel like I have my right to say I don’t like my president,” he said. “We went through four years of people saying downright nasty things about Trump. I figured, ‘Hey, I’m gonna put this up’ and I did and here we are now.”
Asked if he’s concerned about offending people by the “f-word” being on the flag, Snyder balked.
“The beauty of the country we live in is I can say what I want and those people also are entitled to their opinions and can say what they want,” he said. He has received far more support than criticism for the flags, he added.
The biggest complaint he has seen so far relates to the idea of children seeing the flag. To that, Snyder suggested parents take note to what music their children are listening to.
“The attention span of children is pretty short,” he said. “If you’re driving past my house, I’d be pretty surprised if your kids even saw my flag.”
Snyder also has a bumper sticker on his vehicle’s tailgate attacking a key figure on the opposite end of the policy spectrum from Biden — former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. The sticker reads, “Mitch McConnell is a flagrant d***head.”
“When you look at what’s going on in the country today, there’s a lot of hypocrisy from both sides of it,” Snyder said. “I do not like either side. I do not like the two-party system. I do not like how government is representing us right now.”
Saginaw County attorney and free speech advocate Philip L. Ellison said Snyder is within his rights to fly the potentially offensive flag.
“My reaction to this from a legal standpoint is he has a legal, constitutional right to exercise his free speech,” Ellison said. “Free speech, whether it’s on a sign or in a fortune cook or on a flag, you have a right to it and the government can’t handcuff you from exercising that speech, except in highly limited circumstances. This isn’t one of them.”
Ellison said the remedy for perceived “bad speech” is to provide counter speech, not for the government to impose less speech.
While governments can regulate the structures of speech, like the physical dimensions of a sign or flag, its proximity to roadways, and the like, they cannot limit its message, again except for in limited contexts, Ellison said.
Ellison also pointed out there have been and continue to be similar political flags bearing vulgar language flying from private residences that have been allowed to fly unfettered from government censorship.
“What’s someone to do if you disagree with your neighbor’s message?” Ellison rhetorically asked. “Use the time-honored tradition of trying to convince them they’re wrong.”
Michigan previously had an obscure statute dating back to 1897 that prohibited the use of “indecent, immoral, obscene, vulgar or insulting language in the presence or hearing of any woman or child.” The violation is a misdemeanor.
The law drew national attention when, in August 1998, a Roseville man was charged with it for yelling the “f-word” as many as 75 times within earshot of a 5-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl after he fell out of a canoe on the Rifle River in Arenac County. The man, thereafter dubbed the “cussing canoeist,” was convicted of the crime, but a state Court of Appeals in 2002 overturned his conviction, saying the law was too vague.
Then-Gov. Rick Snyder in December 2015 signed legislation eliminating the law.
For those interested in the etymology of the “f-word” etymology and how its meaning and connotations have evolved over the centuries, Netflix’s recently released docu-comedy series “History of Swear Words” has an episode focusing on it. The show is hosted by Nicolas Cage and debuted on the streaming platform on Jan. 5.
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‘It’s a freedom of speech thing for me,’ says Bay County man flying anti-Biden flag with crude wording - MLive.com
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