Baby steps for blue laws

Indiana is starting to make some progress repealing out-of-date liquor laws. A law going into effect today allows stores to sell alcohol on Election Day.

It’s good that the state is finally repealing these outdated statutes. All that law did was hurt liquor stores and alcohol sales a few days every other year.

The goal was to prevent people from voting under the influence, but there are easy ways around the measure, including buying beer the day before and drinking it at home before hitting the polls.

Even though the new law is a good thing, it also seems like a lousy issue to waste time on. After all, the ban only affected people twice a year in certain years. That’s not hugely important.

It was ridiculous, but the time and effort that went into creating the new legislation and pushing it through could have been used for better things.

For instance, getting rid of that ban on selling alcohol on Sundays.

The blue laws are ridiculous. The ban on Sunday alcohol sales is merely a remnant of a bygone era in which the dominant religion enforced its will on the people at large.

Restricting the sale of a legal product in a context some consider immoral is a violation of the separation of church and state — a barrier we in this era should uphold.

Yes, there are ways around the Sunday ban (like buying booze the night before). The fact that it’s not hard to drink on Sundays (with a little planning ahead) doesn’t mean the law is fine the way it is.

The excuse that liquor store employees deserve a day off is silly. Most businesses of that kind don’t schedule employees every day of the week, and anyone who wants the day off for religious purposes or just for a rest can request to not work on that day.

The sight of grocery stores with ropes around their alcohol aisles every Sunday is saddening — and it’s offensive to those who don’t share in the religious belief that Sunday is a day of rest and worship (and to those who forgot to pick up their booze on Saturday).

So now we can consume alcohol on Election Day. We can go buy cheap beer and take turns swigging it in the parking lot until we’re drunk out of our minds. Then (assuming we can still walk straight) we can go into the polls and vote for the person who, in the event of a nuclear threat, pushes the red button that launches a missile into another country and the United States into war.

(Depending on how much we’ve had to drink, we might be writing Santa Claus in.)

But heaven forbid we should drink on a Sunday.

Good for Indiana for loosening up the alcohol restrictions a little. Despite any drunk idiots who might not have the sense to drink after they vote, letting up that tight control-freak clamp is a good start.

The only question is, when are we finally going to repeal the antiquated blue laws completely?