Posted on 07/06/2006 11:35:38 AM PDT by GeorgiaDawg
Hi all....
FReepers have been very helpful in the past and I wanted to touch base to see if you could help again.
Our city council is debating putting Sunday alcohol sales on the ballot, yet again. The matter has been defeated twice in the past few years, but they are considering the referendum again.
While I am a believer of seperation of church and state, I also believe in keeping the Sabbath holy....can this be reconciled? I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments on any experience any of you have had with this issue...
Georgia Dawg
"Our city is promoting Sunday sales as an "economic boost" because we supposedly lose revenue to neighboring counties. That is a silly argument. We are about 30,000 population wise and the "neighboring county" they refer to is about 250,000 with more tourist attractions."
Good. I just wanted to know where you stand on it. And I agree with your reasoning.
The difference between most of the items on that list and the blue laws that survived is monumental. As Chief Justice Warren stated in the Blue Laws case in the 1960s:
"the state regulates conduct by enacting a general law within its power, the purpose and effect of which is to advance the state's secular goals, the statute is valid despite its indirect burden on religious observances unless the state may accomplish its purpose by means which do not impose such a burden. "
Your own opinion is that consumption is a vice. Obviously, many Christians - and the vast majority of American society - disagree with you. We don't intend to control what you should do with reference to alcohol, and the same consideration is expected in return. :)
That's not an argument, though. The early and medieval Church imposed some serious penalties for failing to toe the line on matters of morality and heresy. I don't defer to that time period either in advising on current legislation ("Hey, you could be drawn and quartered back then for having a sex toy. You shouldn't be complaining that you're only getting 30 days in jail now.")
First you were talking about using laws to preserve "regional traditions". Now you are changing to wanting to preserve "legal traditions" for the sake of themselves.
Okay, let's play your new game. How about that "legal tradition of the Southern community" known as Jim Crow? Should those cultural artifacts of legally enshrined prejudice have been preserved as well?
Blue laws are nothing more than discriminatory laws aimed at the non-Christian or non-faithful minority to enforce cultural compliance to the majority religious mores, using the power of the State. If an action is moral on Monday, it is moral on Sunday.
I just really don't know what the blue laws have to do with Pearl Harbor in the first place, that's all.
The first two groups items are 'sundries' and the last two are unenforceable. Your preaching to the choir. I did the job. You forgot that seeds can be purchased using the EBT.
Not here in Vuh-ginia. :)
No, it was to demonstrate that people who "chase bears", as you put it, still have time to enforce rules that we would consider today to be related to matters of personal choice.
Consuming alcohol is not a vice. It's a healthy activity for millions. Overconsumption is a vice.
Nice try, Lex. My comment specifically mentioned regional histories related to PROHIBITION. That implicitly denotes a legal tradition. Don't try to act like I am changing the topic of debate.
I have already apologized for confusing you.
The concept has to do with respect for the sabbath. I don't know how more plainly to put it.
Which sabbath? Saturday or Sunday? There are two, you know.
I don't see how Blue Laws advance the state's secular goals, not at all.
My philosophy is irrelevant.
By any measure, traditional or philosophical, the right of two parties to make their own arrangements between themselves with no violation of the rights of uninvolved others, is itself a fundamental rights.
Mob rule. Tyranny of majority. They violate individual life and property rights. That's why the founders detested democracy and created a representative republic
semantics
Why is having a beer or glass of wine with dinner a "vice"?
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