Amen to alcohol on Sundays

Many of us on the editorial board who hail from out of state have occasionally found Indiana to be a peculiar place.

One of the most peculiar things about it is its rule against selling alcohol on Sunday.

Needless to say, plenty of us found about this law only after bringing up a twelve pack to a cashier on the second busiest shopping day of the week. Many of us found being turned away decidedly inconvenient.

Hoosiers for Beverage Choices, a coalition of trade associations and retailers, is lobbying Indiana to repeal its long-standing ban on Sunday alcohol sales.

It claims that more than 13,000 people from all 92 Indiana counties have signed its online petition seeking Sunday liquor sales.

As it stands now, the law does not allow any Indiana store to sell alcohol for carryout on Sundays, however – and this part really confuses us – bars and restaurants are permitted to sell alcohol by the drink.

Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Hoosiers for Beverage Choices and plenty of other frustrated Indiana residents, this issue might gain some steam in the next Indiana General Assembly session. That’s something we couldn’t be happier about.

What kind of message does the current law send? It’s OK to drink in public under the presumption that you won’t drive, but not in the privacy of your own home?

This doesn’t even prevent drinking in your home on Sunday. People can buy a beer on Saturday, Friday or any other day of the week.

The law smacks of old-school values and days when few things were open on Sundays. Those days are long behind us.

Most of the opposition today comes from liquor retailers who worry about the costs of operating an extra day of the week.

This really isn’t a moral issue anymore.

Even for the few who are defending the law out of faith, it’s unfair to prohibit everyone – even non-Christians – from buying alcohol because of Christian values.

What’s really the issue here is trusting people to make their own decisions about purchasing and consuming alcohol.

If the current law is any indication, then we apparently only believe that people can make these decisions for themselves six days a week.

We couldn’t think of any decent reason why Hoosiers should have less of a right than residents of most other states to buy alcohol on certain days.

That’s why we would encourage all Hoosiers to urge their state senators and representatives to take action.

Here’s to changing out-dated laws.

Cheers.