AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
Washington: President George W. Bush on Monday signed a law that bans protests at military funerals, in a bid to counter a group that has staged anti-gay demonstrations at ceremonies for soldiers killed in Iraq.
Bush signed the law, already passed by Congress, as the United States marked Memorial Day, a national holiday devoted to commemorating the country's war dead from all conflicts.
The White House said that Bush had signed the “Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act” which follows months of controversial protests by a hardline group of Baptists from Kansas.
The group have turned up at scores of funerals across the country holding banners saying that the war dead are “God's wrath” at US tolerance for homosexuals.
Politicians and veterans groups have expressed disgust at the protests.
The new law “prohibits certain demonstrations at cemeteries under the control of the National Cemetery Administration and at Arlington National Cemetery, and provides for punishment of such demonstrations as misdemeanours,” the White House said.
“I'm pleased the President has acted so quickly to sign this bill so that we can ensure families are able to honor their heroic loved ones in peace and with the dignity they deserve,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a statement.
The measure bans protests within 100 metres (300 feet) of the entrance of a national cemetery and 50 metres (150 feet) from a road into the cemetery. The ban applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. The law allows for a fine of 100,000 dollars and up to a year in prison for violators.
It does not name any group but is clearly aimed at the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, which has achieved nationwide notoriety through the protests.
The group has said the law is a “blatant” infringement of free speech and said it would keep up its activities while staying in line with the new restrictions.
Typical of their activities was their gesture at a funeral in March for an army sergeant, killed in Iraq, at Flushing in Michigan.
Five women from Westboro church sang and danced as they held up signs saying “thank God for dead soldiers” at the funeral.
Hundreds of flag waving bikers went to Flushing in a bid to shield the soldier's family. They turned their leather-clad backs to the five women and held flags and canvas covers so that mourners walking by would not see the signs saying “God hates fags,” “fag vets” and “America is doomed”.
The Patriot Guard Riders say they have 16,000 members nationally ready to block the fire and brimstone Baptists at military funerals.
The church's founder Fred Phelps has savoured the notoriety. “I'm kind of honoured,” he told AFP in an interview in March.
Phelps said he and his congregation are targeting the funerals because God's way of punishing an “evil nation” of “fags and fag enablers” is to “pick off its children.”
“I don't have any sympathy for these parents. They're all going to hell,” Phelps said of the relatives of the dead soldiers. “The family's in pain because they haven't obeyed the Lord God.”
The Westboro Baptists first gained national notoriety when they picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay.
They have since picketed the funerals of Frank Sinatra and Bill Clinton's mother, celebrated the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as an act of God's wrath, and have even targeted Santa Claus and the Ku Klux Klan.
