God Dan -> Ross Cassell wrote:

 GD>> It's your preconceptions, misconceptions and lack of psychic
 GD> abilities.


 RC>> So let me get this straight...

 RC>> A. You firmly believe that people exist whom are religious to the
 RC>> point of being rabid or fundemental, whom strive to cram their beliefs
 RC>> into your face and life.

 GD> I don't need to believe it.  I've had it happen to me, more than once.

As have I, but not in the recent past and I do live in the Bible Belt, you do not.

Blue Laws were not new to me, I was born and raised in Virginia, it had
blue laws too, but before I was old enough to care, they repealed theirs,
so I guess at the time I had no up front exposure to them..

I moved down here to South Carolina in the second half of 1987, and the
blue laws were a rude awakening for me. Unless you went to and belonged to
a Private Club, one could not go into a restaurant for on-premise
consumption of beer, wine or liquor. Additionally beer and wine could not
be sold for carry-out purposes between 12am Sunday til 6am Monday.

Additionally retail stores could not sell what was deemed as
non-necessities on Sundays before 1:30pm (This law was once so tight as to
say not at all on Sundays). A necessity would be something like Food,
restaurant, Auto Parts etc.. Although they did have a list, for instance a
womans bikin top was a necessity, a bra was not..

Places in SC deemed as tourist areas, mainly the coast, were exempted from
these blue laws for the most part.

So you can imagine for young people out in the party scene having rather
drab and boring Saturday nights with an early last call. You had people
lining up at the grocery and liquor stores on saturday nights. Those
wanting to go shopping had to wait until 1:30pm. This law presented real
challenges to Super K-marts, whereas they had to rope off the store except
for the grocery section.

The state achieved constitutionality for these blue laws by wording them as
such as to have them wield their authority to regulate commerce.

Side Note: Blue laws or not, I had no issue with liquor stores not
openning, they needed at least one day off a week and if its okay for there
to not be postal service on Sundays, why not?

Attempts to eliminate the blue laws or relax them mostly failed in the
early 1990's, with their advocates citing religious reasons:

"Workers need time to worship or spend time with their families"

"Consuming alchohol is a sin on the sabbath"

I poo-poo'ed them because these same people were lining up at the steak
houses after church let out, emergency service workers were working, the
power company was making sure the church organ and sound system and
lighting worked. When I would point this out to one of these advocates,
they usually would hiss in anger "thats different". I would then
tell them that I work in retail and worked for a retailer that was
forbidden to sell anything before 1:30pm and that we would merely come in
to do other tasks and just open the doors at 1:30pm. They said
"oh". So much for them thinking the law was allowing me time to
spend time with family.

I would merely tell these people that if they objected to drinking on
Sunday to not drink, that if they objected to retail commerce on Sundays to
not work in retail or to not shop on Sundays.

Heh Heh, where I work now, we started openning on Easter Sundays in 2007,
after years of never openning on Easter. I worked that first Easter Sunday
2 years ago and had a customer come in, we were literally doing no business
and had been open for a couple hours before he came in, wanting printer
ink.. Of course this is after he told us that we shouldnt have been open,
which I said if you thought that sir, why did you leave home to go
shopping? I then told him that we had to open when our competition decided
to, we couldnt surrender potential sales to the competition. But he had no
response as to why he was out shopping.

Anyway, the state eventually allowed the individual counties and cities
hold referendums on whether or not to maintain the blue laws, as a result
many places have done away with one or both blue laws.

So yes Dan, I am well aware how fundies wish to insert them and their
beliefs into the lives of others..

 RC>> B. You deny the fact that there are atheists whom are the same exact
 RC>> way.

 GD> None that I personally know of.  Madalyn O'Hare pretty much fell into
 GD> that caregory though.

You dont need to cite only one name, just admit that rabid atheists exist,
I never inferred you were personally familiar with all that do exist.


-- 
Ross
Fidonet Feeds Or Fidonet In Your Newsreader: http://www.easternstar.info
E-mail: ross(at)cassell(dot)us | Other Places: http://links.cassell.us
Fidonet Netmail Routing Chart Z1 Only: http://netmail.fidonet4u.info

--- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.19) Gecko/20081209