I haven’t done much substantive posting lately – between being quite busy at my day job and having my blog time eaten up by the conversion to the new platform, other things have fallen by the wayside. But with the conversion pretty much done, it’s back to business.
And what better topic to start with than my favorite contrarian theme: the blue laws! As regular readers know, I hate them, and my libertarian leanings on this subject have created a spirited debate in the comments to previous posts.
All of which is to say that today’s Globe has an entertaining article on the other blue laws that remain on the books in Massachusetts, besides the now-well-known Thanksgiving/Christmas closing law. The article mentions, for example, the ban on selling auto parts before 1 pm on Sundays – except for emergencies, the ban on yelling at the ump at a baseball game – unless you’re under 16, and my personal favorite, the ban on charging admission to dancing events on Sundays – except for folk or square dancing. (Unfortunately, the amusing graphic that accompanies the article in the print version is not reproduced online, and it’s too big for me to scan.)
I have big philosophical objections to blue laws in general that I’ve discussed in previous posts and in the comments to them, and I won’t repeat those arguments here. But I also have a huge practical objection to the way these laws are written. As the Globe article details, these laws all date from the 1600s, and they’ve been “modernized” in a piecemeal, almost random fashion over the years. There is simply no rhyme or reason to what is and is not allowed under these things. I argued in a comment to this post that “if the legislature really wants to enforce days of rest, it should do it right: wipe the law books clean, hold hearings, and write laws that make sense in light of the world today.” Today’s Globe article shows how desperately that action is needed.
