Government Forbids Boy Scouts From Putting American Flags on Veterans’ Graves for Memorial Day

The government has forbidden the Boy Scouts from practicing their annual tradition of putting American flags on the graves of veterans for Memorial Day, due to the coronavirus.

There are now growing calls to allow the scouts to continue their decades long tradition this year.

The ban on the flag planting is due to an order from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs which has prohibited public events at the sites over concerns about the pandemic. Troops from New York, California, Maryland, Missouri and Wisconsin are among those who will not be able to place flags under the current orders.

“If we can’t figure out a way to make sure we are placing flags at their graves to honor them, then something is seriously wrong,” Suffolk County executive Steve Bellone, whose county includes the sprawling Calverton and Long Island National Cemeteries, which hold more veterans than any other military cemetery in the nation, including Arlington National Cemetery, told Fox News.

Bellone believes that there is a way to safely place the flags while continuing to social distance.

“What we’re asking the VA to do is, rather than have a blanket policy across the country, allow the national cemeteries at the local level, to make this determination in conjunction with the local health department,” he told Fox News. “We will take the responsibility to say that this flag placement plan meets the state and national guidelines but give us that opportunity to do it, allow us to honor our fallen heroes.”

Eagle Scout Kieran Monaghan is one of the voices calling for the scouts to be able to lay the flags. His father is a veteran and he has been active in the annual honoring for the last five years.

“It’s definitely a very emotional, kind of moving experience. Personally, my Dad is a veteran,” Monaghan told Fox News. “He was deployed in Iraq for a year. It’s good to be able to pay our respects to our fallen heroes, it’s important to me, it’s important to the Boy Scouts, it’s important to the community and it’s something that I would hate to see go.”

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