Sten Gazette

The Colorado legislature is considering the repeal of one of the state’s two remaining “Blue Laws,” and it’s interesting to consider why such a Victorian imposition of Christian “morality” on the public requires any effort at all. The two blue laws still on the books in CO are those that ban the sale of alcoholic beverages and motor vehicles on Sunday. The legislature is currently debating removal of the restrictions on Sunday liquor sales.

Blue Laws are still one of the most prevalent “establishments” of religion in the United States, and often they are not recognized for what they are. Colorado’s two are excellent examples of the “genre.”

The term Blue Laws technically means laws that are designed to regulate public morality. In practice, going back to the Puritan colonists, the morality which is regulated is fundamentally Christian, and so a large percentage of them related to observation of the Christian Sabbath, or what was or was not allowed on Sunday. Almost all of the acknowledged Blue Laws that are still on the books in the U.S. are related to Sunday trading.

In December (see “Merry Christmas” 12/05/04) we commented on the irony of devout Christians attempting to preserve Christmas traditions which were really nothing more (or less) than recycled pagan rites. Well, there’s a similar irony with the Blue Laws: the first documented “blue law” was issued by the Roman Emperor Constantine I, in 329AD. He is well known as the first Christian emperor, but his Sunday law, the first “blue law,” was written to enforce observation of “the venerable day of the Sun.”

They are called “blue” laws as a reflection of the term “blue nosed” as applied to Puritans in 17th Century England. The term “blue nose” and association of the color blue with Puritanism go back at least that far. By the way, there is absolutely no evidence that American colonial blue laws were printed on blue paper– that’s a myth that you will see reported as fact in many Internet publications that should know better. The first known use of the term “blue laws” was by Reverend Samuel Peters in 1781, a hundred years after the publication of the laws that he was describing in colonial Connecticut as “Blue Laws: i.e. bloody Laws.” Bloody because common punishments for “blue law” infractions included whipping, branding, and the cutting off of ears.

In 1961 the Supreme Court ruled that state blue laws were constitutional if they had a primarily “secular” purpose.

The two Blue Laws still on the books in Colorado had essentially secular purposes, on the face of it, and the current attempt to eliminate the liquor ban is facing a significant amount of resistance from some of those in the industry.

The situation is pretty bizarre– liquor stores must close on Sunday (literally at midnight, Saturday night), but alcohol can be purchased for consumption in restaurants and bars, and 3.2% beer can be sold in grocery stores and gas stations. The differentiation between 3.2% beer and other alcoholic beverages is that the former can be sold in grocery and convenience stores and consumed in Colorado State Parks. That’s a “blue law” in itself, and the Sunday law is just an embellishment. A change in the Sunday law will not have any particular impact on the underlying “blue nosed” attempts to control the vice of alcohol consumption. The loudest protest about the proposed change is coming not from the conservative Christians (who do have a disproportionate amount of political clout in Colorado) but from the owners of small liquor stores. Typically these are “family” operations and their reason for complaint is that they would either have to work seven days a week or actually pay someone part-time to keep the store open. In our opinion, if there is any unfairness here it is that people involved in one particular retail industry have taken advantage of a quaint blue law in ways that aren’t available to any other shopkeeper. They are saying that without the restrictions on Sunday alcohol sales they can’t compete. Which may very well be true, but operators of delicatessens and restaurants do not have that protection.

Motor vehicle dealers have successfully resisted several attempts to abolish the blue law that prohibits Sunday car sales. They argue that their employees need a day off on the weekend just like everybody else. Obviously that doesn’t apply to people who work in grocery stores, or gas stations, or restaurants or any of the other myriad businesses that operate on Sunday.

Colorado’s motor vehicle blue law does indeed have a secular purpose– so secular that it is a closely guarded secret. Most car buyers can only shop on weekends, which means Saturday only in Colorado. A salesman has a huge advantage if the customer feels he has to make a decision on the spot or wait till next week. If car sales were allowed on Sunday, a customer might want to “sleep on it,” which would give him time to reconsider, talk to his friends and family, etc. That’s why car dealers want to close on Sunday.

Both laws, by their reference to Sunday only, pay lip-service to Christian Sabbatism. Those in a position to benefit financially from these laws, when allied with Christians who think they are supporting Christian morality, have enough political power to keep them on the books. Sounds a bit the Republican victory in the last election, doesn’t it?

Blue laws by their nature are an imposition of one particular set of religious beliefs– Christian morality– on the entire population. As long as they are on the books, it is difficult to maintain that there is a separation between Church and State. Conservative Christians do not want the two to be separated, believing that their religion should be imposed on everyone. But the same church that our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the anti-establishment clause of the Constitution (the First Amendment) was the very church that used to cut people’s ears off for gambling on Sunday.

The Colorado legislature is on the right track in eliminating one of the Sunday blue laws, and we can only hope that they will take more than this little step along that track. As always, when considering an issue of this kind, we should try to see through the hype and political maneuverings to see who benefits, and how. Blue laws are a confusion of Church and State, and they benefit only those who think the Christian Right way is the only way, and those who will derive some unfair economic advantage.

–SG

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2005 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Law and the Courts, Issues, Church and State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.