Smite no-Sunday

According to a recent poll conducted by The Indianapolis Star and published Monday, 50 percent of Hoosiers favor maintaining Indiana's "blue laws." \nHow absurd. Why the people of Indiana continue to uphold this ban, we'll never understand -- especially since the rest of the world has absolutely no problem with the color blue.\nJust kidding. "Blue laws" are laws restricting what people can do or buy on Sundays -- in Indiana's case, the state bans most Sunday sales of alcoholic beverages (the exception being by-the-drink sales in restaurants and bars). By state law, grocery and liquor stores have to stop selling at 3 a.m. Sunday, and can't resume until 7 a.m. Monday.\nThat said, after a discussion up in the ol' editorial board tree fort, we think this still sounds pretty nuts.\nNow, we know that any argument in favor of easier access to alcohol is a hard sell with the IU student body (cough, cough) -- but, really, it's not hard to see that these laws make sense neither in terms of economics nor public policy. Let's look at the pro-blue law arguments offered up in the aforementioned The Indianapolis Star article:\n• It will curb underage drinking. How is it supposed to do this exactly? If we may re-purpose a quote from one of the law's proponents: "If you want it on Sunday, there are six other days you can get it." Are we supposed to believe that the ID checks and other measures undertaken on the week's other six days somehow magically fail on Sundays? \n• Sunday should be held "sacred and holy." Look, if you don't drink on Sundays because of your religious beliefs, bully for you. But, we live in a secular and increasingly multicultural society -- the Bill of Rights' \namendment Numero Uno says the rest of us don't have to do things just because a group's religion says so. Now, this argument might be justified if it could be shown that blue laws' existence got God to hold off on the divine wrath a bit -- but this doesn't seem the case. Here at the IDS, we'd happily endorse blue laws if, in exchange, the Big Kahuna would cut back on the arbitrary smitings. Say, how about no more flesh-eating bacteria? \n• It gives mom and pop liquor stores a day off. Yes, indeed, The Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers has made this argument -- somehow blissfully \nunaware that nearly every other form of private enterprise in the U.S. economy manages to survive without a government-mandated Sunday break. Here's a novel idea: if there's money to be made in Sunday sales, but you don't want to work those days, how about hiring someone to sell things for you? This has the pleasant side-effects of reducing unemployment and stimulating economic growth. \nIn short, these blue laws are a harmful anachronism whose repeal is long due. Of course, we are talking about a state that took 189 years to adopt daylight-saving time.