Yellow ribbons, traditional symbols of yearning for the safe return of a soldier fighting overseas, have been banned from public places in a New England town after they were denounced as “political” by anti-war activists.

The controversy has bitterly divided South Portland, which was peppered with ribbons on signs and telegraph poles in honour of two young men when they were killed in Iraq within two weeks of each other in March.

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“A yellow ribbon means to me respect, it’s honour and ‘Please come home, we’re waiting for you’, just good things. I don’t see how anybody can misconstrue it and turn it into something that’s pro-Bush or pro-war, I just don’t know.”

But Calvin Muse, 46, a local artist and writer who has “never supported the war from day one”, takes an opposite view.

“When you have them hung up around your town it becomes a blanket statement of support [for the war],” he said.

“If you’re going to allow them on public property you’re also going to have to allow me, or anyone that might want to, to put their anti-war statements up as well.”

The ribbon, he argued, is laden with extra meaning “because now the caveat is that supporting the troops should also mean you want them to fulfil their mission” in Iraq.

“There is a fear of talking about this, a fear of being labelled as unpatriotic for not supporting the troops. But supporting the troops may mean ending the war and bringing the troops home. What purer form of support could there be?”

The yellow ribbon tradition is at least a century old and was first recorded in a 1917 song about a girl missing her army sweetheart that included the words: “Around her neck she wore a yellow ribbon…And if you ask me why the heck she wore it, She wore it for her soldier who was far, far away.”

Yellow ribbons were banned from public property by the South Portland council in 2003. But this was relaxed for 30 days after Sgt Swiger was killed along with three other soldiers when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up as they were handing out sweets to children in near the town of Baquba.
New England town divided over yellow ribbons - Telegraph

As long as people blindly associate "war dissent" with "not supporting the troops", it lends validity to the complaints against the yellow ribbons.
If people on both sides of the issue would separate the issue of "supporting the troops" and "opinion of the war", it would remove the validity of the complaint.