IPFS News Link • Government
What can't you take to Arlington National Cemetery on July 4? An American flag.
• https://www.washingtonpost.comMany Americans gathering to celebrate Independence Day will mark the holiday at Arlington National Cemetery. But for visitors feeling patriotic, there is one item that is banned on the hallowed grounds: a waving American flag.
Earl Granville, a retired Army staff sergeant and veterans advocate who lost his leg in a bombing in Afghanistan, said that he was surprised to learn about the obscure federal law that prohibits visitors from carrying an unfurled U.S. flag at the cemetery.
"There's absolutely, positively nothing disrespectful whatsoever about carrying the colors to the cemetery where our fallen armed forces are buried," Granville said.
The law — 38 U.S. Code § 2413 — emerged in 2006 when former U.S. Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Mich.) grew angry after watching mourners at a military burial face "chants and taunting and some of the most vile things I have ever heard," Rogers told the Associated Press at the time.
Rogers was referring to protests by members of the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church, who showed up at Arlington burials with posters chiding mourners with messages such as "Thank God for dead soldiers." They picketed military funerals, claiming that combat deaths represented God's anger for the country's tolerance of homosexuality.
1 Comments in Response to What can't you take to Arlington National Cemetery on July 4? An American flag.
I don't truely understand the problem with the American flag, especially with this cemetery. I mean they fight for the country so they had represented it for a moment of their lives and in my opinion, bringing a flag is like showing the country is thanksful. I work in funeral and do memorial plaque, and when there is a dead soldier the family ( or friends ) ask for a flag. I do think it is understandable. It is not disrespectful. https://www.plaque-funeraire.fr/en/