President Obama Trumps Westboro Baptist Church

Westboro Baptist Church has a history of picketing the funerals of sinners. If you’ve read the Bible, you might recall that we are all sinners. This, of course, gives Westboro Baptist Church plenty of funerals to picket. They get to choose which ones to attend. Generally, they’ve chosen high profile funerals as places to spew their hate. On Monday, their choices became fewer.

On Monday, President Obama signed the Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012 into law. The law provides a wide range of benefits to military personnel. Also included in the law is a restriction on protests of service members’ funerals. President Obama stated:

We have a moral sacred duty to our men and women in uniform. The graves of our veterans are hallowed grounds.

The new law states that protests must be held at least 300 feet from military funerals and are prohibited two hours before and after a service. This, of course, did not sit well with Westboro Baptist Church members who claimed the law’s restrictions could also have an effect on groups organized to demonstrate in response to Westboro’s protests (two examples of the counter protests happened in Missouri and Texas when people created human walls to block Westboro’s protests.)

Read that logic, my friends. It’s a bad law because groups can’t counter protest against us. *Sigh*

A Westboro spokesman told CNN this weekend that the new law was “not going to change our plans at all.” I guess they have a ton of money because future violations would include the possibility of $50,000 is statutory damages.

You’d think that if the President of the United States signed a law directed at YOU, you might change some of your ways. Regardless of the future actions of Westboro Baptist Church, I’m proud of our lawmakers and President Obama for standing up for the veterans in our country. It’s about time.

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