"This year shows we have the best chance we've ever had," Hatch said Wednesday.

While the House has passed the measure five times since 1995 in the run-up to the Fourth of July, the resolution has never received Senate approval. Hatch, who has 53 co-sponsors for his Senate version, will urge a vote later this summer. If passed by two-thirds of the Senate, 38 states must then ratify the amendment.

"The flag is our national symbol," Hatch said in an interview. "We have young men dying and young women dying over in Iraq and Afghanistan as we speak. We're fighting for the principles that flag represents.

"Secondly, I do not believe that urinating on the flag, defecating on the flag, burning it with contempt constitute free speech. Those are acts of physical desecration."

Utah Republican Reps. Chris Cannon and Rob Bishop, who both supported the House proposal that passed 286-130, echoed those comments.

The American flag "is our ultimate icon, and when it is attacked, we are all attacked," Cannon said.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, voted against the resolution, saying that free speech protects the right to actions like flag burning. He added that flag burning is rare and there is no constitutional crisis requiring an amendment, a similar position taken by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.

"Flag burning is cowardly, but I agree with [Bennett] when he says amending the Constitution is too drastic a step," Matheson said. "The Supreme Court has said that even offensive speech must be protected, and that is part of what our fellow Americans have fought and died for."

A fellow Democrat, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, of New York, said the "cavalier attitude toward the Bill of Rights is offensive."

"We are the shining light to the world because we allow dissent, even when that dissent is offensive," Nadler said.

Bishop, though, says the definition of free speech has been expanded too far, including actions like "strip clubs, picketing and flag burning, which are clearly not regular speech under the traditional definition."

A Bishop spokesman clarified later that Bishop meant the free speech provision of the First Amendment was meant to protect oral speech, not other actions.

"While I'm always hesitant to amend the Constitution, this is a prudent, conservative step that returns logic to our First Amendment and protects a national symbol," Bishop said.

Advocates on both sides told Cox Newspapers they count 65 senators as likely to vote for the amendment that needs 67 votes to gain approval. An Associated Press survey found 34 senators on record as opposing the amendment - the exact number needed to defeat it.

tburr@sltrib.com

THE AMENDMENT

''The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.''

Utahns' votes in U.S. House:

Rob Bishop: Yes

Chris Cannon: Yes

Jim Matheson: No

Next step: If the U.S. Senate agrees by a two-thirds margin to the resolution now awaiting action in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Congress would have to draft the amendment, pass it and 38 out of the 50 states would have to ratify it within seven years in order for it to pass.

FLAG BURNING

In the Senate: Orrin Hatch is primary sponsor of the Senate version; Bob Bennett opposes an amendment.

History: In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Texas vs. Johnson on a 5-4 vote that burning a flag is free speech that is protected under the First Amendment. Since 1995, The U.S. House has passed a resolution seeking a constitutional amendment that would trump that ruling, but the Senate has never agreed to it.