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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm feeling a little blue. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: You're feeling a little blue? I'm feeling long delayed.
N. Rodgers: You are so bitter. You are so bitter about this.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not bitter.
N. Rodgers: Oh my gosh. I asked you like, I know two years ago, hey, can we do an episode of like, yeah, I'll research it and you did. Everything happened between then and now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners I baiting Nia in the worst way. Last spring, about this time, Nia and I were deciding on potential topics. Nia said, Aughie let's do blue laws. I go ahead and generate, how many pages of research notes? Three pages. It sat and as Nia went ahead and just mentioned.
N. Rodgers: Stuff kept happening and people kept being interesting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. When we met over the holiday and we were laying out this season's episode-
N. Rodgers: You said and we will record the blue law episode. I love you.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm like there's some root.
N. Rodgers: He's been sitting in the hopper for a while and he does have a bunch of interesting stuff in here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, this is in terms of my research notes, I got to admit I had a lot of fun doing the research for this and I was just like, my God, we're going to do an episode about blue laws.
N. Rodgers: For listeners who don't know what blue laws. Blue Law is what we usually refer to it as in the south. I don't think they really call them blue laws in other places. But blue laws are Sunday laws. Things that either you can't sell on Sunday or your business can't be open on Sunday and this is not Chick-fil-A, this is not a corporate decision made by that company. Chick-fil-A chooses not to be open on Sundays for corporate and religious reasons and they made that choice themselves. This is states saying here are things you can't sell or here are businesses that can't be open specifically on Sundays.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, these are laws passed by government bodies that restrict or ban some or all activities on specified days.
N. Rodgers: In the US, it's on Sunday. But in other places, it's different days.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Most often in Western democracies, it's on Sunday. Blue laws still exist in parts of the United States and Canada, as well as some European countries. The research I found those European countries include Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Norway, where you see most stores closed on Sundays. You may be wondering what is the history of blue laws. Before we get to the controversy, let's talk about the history. The history is pretty fascinating. I did not know until I started doing research that blue laws, these restrictions on days when businesses may be opened, because of government prohibitions or restrictions date as far back as 13th century England. Not surprisingly, Nia, as we've discussed in other podcast episodes, the origin in regards to the United States is that in most of the colonies, they adopted the practice that they used to comply with in their mother country.
N. Rodgers: British common law.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That we've talked about in a previous episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Now, in the New England colonies, blue laws were extensive. They had bans not only on what days businesses could be open, but they had restrictions on wearing lacy short sleeves, to using birth control, to what days you could actually hunt, which was problematic because you might get most of your protein and meat for your family because of hunting, but there were days to where you could not hunt.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say when I read your notes?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I thought it's too bad. Deer don't have calendars. Because then they could just get missing on all the other days of the week and then on Sunday they could all walk up into your yard and be like, hey, do a thing about it right now and you couldn't do a thing about it. I guess you could go out and club one maybe and claim self defense.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Is it technically hunting when you just go out and club an animal? I'm not entirely sure.
N. Rodgers: They don't have calendars, it just work out in their favor.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. A lot of game really don't pay attention to calendars. They act on, shall we say, more natural impulses. Now, the origin of the term is unclear. I saw some accounts that referred to the blue wrapping that accompanied printed documents that you would see from government bodies. More shall we say fanciful descriptions was that the term was a mocking reference to the effort to prevent blue or indecent behavior such as adultery, fortification, blasphemy, and drinking.
N. Rodgers: Blue behavior.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, blue behavior.
N. Rodgers: Although I have to say that my grandma used to say they're called blue laws because they make you sad because you can't go buy whatever it is that you want to buy on a Sunday. That's what she thought it was.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it's funny. You mentioned that because listeners, Nia and I both come from states that, at least in our youth, still had some remaining blue law provisions. In my home state of Pennsylvania, you could not buy alcohol in mass quantities on Sundays, so you would see beer distributor ships on Saturdays advertising blue laws specials on their kegs of beer, and there would be cars lined up out into main streets.
J. Aughenbaugh: Waiting to go ahead and get their keg of beer.
N. Rodgers: Then you turned it in on Monday after work?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You turned it in Monday, you drank it on Saturday and Sunday?
J. Aughenbaugh: Sunday, yes.
N. Rodgers: But then on Monday you take it to work with you, then on Monday you drive by there on your way home and drop off the empty keg and get your deposit back?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Deposit when you have to pay for the keg and then you get that money back.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then after you negotiate how many days you were to abstain from drinking from your significant other, your family members, then you could go back to the beer distributorship and get your next keg.
N. Rodgers: [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: Part of the origin of this episode is that both Nia and I grew up in states in the United States that had Blue Law.
N. Rodgers: Blue Laws, I remember in North Carolina, mostly affecting alcohol and tobacco sales.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The sin sales as a Aggie has been known to call it, syntaxin sales. In North Carolina, some counties in North Carolina, for a while, strip clubs could not be open on Sundays because you couldn't go watch people be naked.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, yes.
N. Rodgers: You had to stay home for that. If you were going to watch people be naked, you had to be at home with other people that you knew being naked there, which is a whole separate thing. But what is fascinating to me is that almost all blue laws in the United States are on Sunday, they are not on Friday. Which is the religious day Friday sundown to Saturday sundown is both Jewish and Muslim sabbath. It is yet another tiny indicator of the founding of this nation, not being for a Christian nation, but being by Christians, and so the laws that they set up tended to afford Christians their holidays or days of rest, or days of Sabbath or whatever, as opposed to recognizing, well, in the colonies would have been a tiny population of Jews and an even less population of Muslims.
J. Aughenbaugh: Muslims. That's right.
N. Rodgers: In the colonies, because in the colonies you had mostly Christians.
J. Aughenbaugh: We've discussed in previous podcast episodes, almost every single colony that was chartered by Great Britain had a specific Christian religion. In Massachusetts it was being Protestant in Pennsylvania it was Quaker.
N. Rodgers: Georgia was Baptist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Georgia was Baptist, Maryland was Catholic. The effect of religion on our public policies has been wired into the history and political culture of the United States. But blue laws, and I get asked this with some regularity by my students. Don't blue laws violate certain provisions of, in particular, the First Amendment of the US Constitution?
N. Rodgers: Prohibition against the establishment of a national religion.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or it affects the free exercise of religion. What if you're not Christian?
N. Rodgers: And you want to buy beer on a Sunday and you live in a county that's dry.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: By the way. That's what they call, now, they don't call it blue, they call it dry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In the North they always called it dry. We're a dry county. Meaning you can't buy that alcohol certain days.
J. Aughenbaugh: What if you were a business owner who had non dominant religious beliefs and you wanted to have your store open on a Sunday or a Saturday.
N. Rodgers: Or if you're Orthodox Jewish, your store cannot be open on Saturday or Sunday. If you sell certain things, which means that you've lost two days. The two days when most people consider to be the weekend is when they do a great deal of their shopping.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the conflict constitutionally comes with the fact that states have police power per the Tenth Amendment. They can regulate individual private behavior for public health and safety. Even if the law is informed by a particular religion. If government leaders say, we need a day off from buying stuff, whether it be booze or whatever, that would be good for our community. Isn't that per the authority of a state in the Tenth Amendment?
N. Rodgers: The ability to sell stuff, the ability to work. There is an argument to be made from the state side that everybody needs a day of rest. There needs to be a day when you cannot compel your employees to come to work. I know that that applies in a lot of times we talk about it in terms of postal office. Because postal workers can volunteer to work on a Sunday, but they cannot be compelled to work on a Sunday. They cannot be compelled to work seven days a week, there has to be a day when they are not scheduled to work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not surprisingly, because this is the United States, challenges to Blue Laws have gone to court numerous times, and almost universally, the Supreme Court has held that Blue Laws are constitutional. The Supreme Court has typically cited the non religious or secular basis of securing a day of rest for, and I'm going to give you a list. Male carriers as you just mentioned. As well as protecting workers and family, which the court then says contributes to societal stability and guaranteeing the free exercise of religion.
N. Rodgers: If you can tell your workers to work every single day, they may or may not be able to attend, excuse me, to attend religious [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: Services, yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which could be detrimental to them if they are people who need or want those services.
N. Rodgers: If the State cannot go ahead and look out for institutions which historically have been viewed as contributing positively to society, like churches, families, et cetera, this would undercut the state's police power. Now the classic example is the McGowan case versus Maryland in 1961. Now, I just want to remind listeners this is, if you will, amidst the Warren Court, probably the most liberal Supreme Court in our country's history. The court in an eight to one vote, it was not even close. Upheld Sunday closing laws holding that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have a secular or non religious purpose.
J. Aughenbaugh: What you're talking about in terms of reinforcing families, reinforcing mental health?
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: All of that can be a secular reasons why. You can say you don't want either of these things sold or these businesses open on Sunday or any other day, you could pick a different day if you don't want to say Sunday, states could interchangeably say Wednesdays, we don't sell any alcohol on Wednesdays. Because we want people to be together with their families and to attend services that would allow them to cohesion in the community because that's better for us as a community.
N. Rodgers: What was at issue in this case? There was a large discount store in Maryland that was fined for selling goods on a Sunday, which violated a local blue law. The court rejected the challenge based on the establishment clause, saying that Sunday closing laws may have been originally designed to promote church attendance. But, "Despite the strongly religious origin of these laws, non religious arguments for Sunday closing began to be heard more distinctly." This is where the court went ahead and said that just because a law might have had a religious, if you will, origin or character, they today in modern times provide a day of rest for all citizens.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which most people would consider a good thing.
N. Rodgers: That's right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because didn't unions get behind that too? Or like they could only make us work six days instead of seven?
N. Rodgers: Labor unions and trade associations have historically supported blue law legislation. Because there is one day a week, their members get a day off. That's where there's always been this conflict in terms of political ideology. Because many liberals historically want a wall between church and state. But historically in the United States, labor unions have also been liberal and they've liked Blue Laws.
J. Aughenbaugh: In there as the members.
N. Rodgers: Sure. But you wanted to say something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Did you can't see me. Listen, this is audio but I just waved my fingers at a and he saw me in the zoom. Can I just say that one of the most interesting things about the colonial Blue laws, the prohibitions against housework and travel?
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which I find fascinating because housework must have been seen as work in order for it to be prohibited on a Sunday. Which we then lost post colonial. It became just women's work and therefore not nearly as important as work outside the home. But I'm fascinated by the idea of not being able to travel on Sunday. I guess that's because it makes other people work.
N. Rodgers: No. The basic idea was, this should be a day of rest for you and your family.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well that's true. Travel is anything but restful. Even back in the day when you were not getting on a plane, it was still not a restful thing to do. Now it's 156,000 times less restful than it was during that period. That's a fair point.
N. Rodgers: Now, interestingly enough to be accurate, most blue laws have been repealed. However many states, and we're talking double digit states, ban the selling of cars on Sundays, and they impose tighter restrictions on the sale of alcoholic drinks on Sundays, and alcohol is still a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, haven't a lot of states gone to county by county?
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because in North Carolina, you could go over the line to other counties and get stuff when you couldn't get it in your county.
N. Rodgers: There are 10 states that basically leave the decision to the counties. By the way, most of those 10 states are seen in southern largely rural states. For many Americans, they equate blue laws with prohibitions on selling alcohol. But to be accurate, Blue laws, as we've been discussing, not only covered alcohol, it covered a wide range of activities. From selling cars to going to strip clubs, to prohibiting travel, prohibiting housework.
J. Aughenbaugh: Can I just comment that Blue laws is limiting the sale of alcohol on Sundays? What they were trying to do is limit the consumption of alcohol on Sundays. That is not the same thing at all because people own calendars, and unlike deer, they can use calendars, which means they will simply buy that alcohol on Saturday, and then consume it on Sunday. Like this idea of not selling a thing because you're trying to avoid the use of that thing. I don't know that that works.
N. Rodgers: In you're correct. Many Americans alter their behavior to correspond with Blue laws. Where Blue laws of recent vintage have been challenged, has been the effect on businesses being open because the business owner does not necessarily subscribe or is not a member of a religious faith that views a particular day as the Sabbath.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was going to ask you about, is the reason for repeal generally speaking, money? Is it economic?
N. Rodgers: Some of it is economics. Let's face it.
J. Aughenbaugh: If I was a business owner, it would peeve me if the state said you can't make money on this given day.
N. Rodgers: Well, particularly if the given day that you cannot engage in commerce is the weekend. Because in many communities, that's when you see an uptick, in commercial activity. Because even in the 21st century, many Americans during the week get their kids to school. They go to work, they come home, they make dinner. They help their kids with their homework. They ain't running around buying stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Say the base plant, and the next day they get up and do it again again.
N. Rodgers: Some of it's economics. But also take note of how the workforce in the United States has changed with labor unions losing members and not having as dominant a role. This idea that one's workers should have required days off as part of a collective bargaining agreement decreased.
N. Rodgers: It wasn't as much of a sticking point in regards to labor negotiations because labor unions lost favor. They didn't completely fall out of favor, but they lost favor. But also many Americans, like citizens in a lot of developed countries, the notion that you have a work week that's only five days has completely changed. Let's think about in our own lives, it's not unusual for you or I to do work on a Saturday or Sunday, and thus we expect businesses to be open on a Saturday or Sunday.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think COVID may have had some effect on that slide too when people were working from home. I noticed that I have a tendency when I work from home to work longer days because I'm here and the computer is here.
N. Rodgers: The repeal process, the primary motivation was economic. The other thing is you've got to take a look at the fact that the United States, like many advanced Western democracies, has become more secular. Religion just isn't as important, particularly organized religion, in the idea that there should be a Sabbath that's just not as important.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a multicultural society, Sabbath has come to mean some day from Friday to Saturday to Sunday. The Sabbaths are being recognized differently than when everybody was Christian and the Sabbath was a Sunday.
N. Rodgers: What's interesting to note is many workplaces have to give their religious workers a Sabbath if that's part of their worker's religious faith. That's required by Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for an employee's bona fide religious practices.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you're in a business and you're Jewish and that business is open Friday nights, the employer has to give you Friday night off to do your religious to have the Sabbath. But then they can schedule you for Sunday because that's not your Sabbath.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: The same way they would then reverse them and do it in a different direction for a Christian. You'll need to work Friday night because Sunday night you get off or whatever. I see. Multiculturalism has also had an effect on these laws.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Probably online purchasing because Amazon will sell you anything anywhere, anytime, for any reason on any planet.
N. Rodgers: On any day. Let's not forget the day here because remember these blue laws focused on days.
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't know, can you buy hard liquor on Amazon? I guess you can.
N. Rodgers: I have not, but I recall during COVID you could depending on the state order from your state liquor store.
J. Aughenbaugh: ABC store and they would deliver.
N. Rodgers: Sometimes the deliveries would show up on Sunday morning, which is Happy Sabbath.
J. Aughenbaugh: A search for Scotch does not bring up, okay, well, table brings up scotch tape, so hang on. Search for vodka. Let me search for something that doesn't have another.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: You can buy vodka on Amazon. With looks like it's under prime. Oh my gosh.
N. Rodgers: A good price?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. I'm just looking. I got distracted by, of course, all the crafts that they will sell you on Amazon, but bottles for it and all kinds of stuff.
N. Rodgers: Now, what's interesting to note-
J. Aughenbaugh: Wait, these are zero-proof, non-alcoholic vodka. Maybe Amazon does not sell because I don't know how Amazon would verify your age.
N. Rodgers: Now, what is interesting to note about the 1964 Civil Rights Act is that the Supreme Court in the 1970s basically made it very easy for businesses to show that a religious or other accommodation would produce an undue burden or impose an undue hardship. But last Supreme Court term, the Supreme Court heard a case of part-time United States postal worker who lost his job because he refused to work on his Sabbath. The US Supreme Court ruled in his favor. They went ahead and changed the standard. Now the burden is on the employer to show that it is a "significant.".
J. Aughenbaugh: I remember that case. We talked about that case. They have to show that it will significantly hurt their business for this person not to work as opposed to the person having to show that they have the right. It falls on the employer and not on the individual. You have in the notes which I just find delightful by the way, the Sunday Blue Laws about hunting.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, I went down a rabbit hole. Because sometimes when we prepare for these podcast episodes, listeners, me and I end up going down a rabbit hole.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my goodness. Three o'clock in the morning you're like, well now I know how to make Soba noodles. Then you're like, well when am I ever going to use that? I'm just going to buy them at the store. But now I know.
N. Rodgers: These particular episodes, Rabbit Hole was Sunday Blue Laws related to hunting.
J. Aughenbaugh: He has two examples here that delight me. In Connecticut you cannot hunt on a Sunday except for "hunting deer with bow and arrow on private property." I'm going to say if you can hunt with bow and arrow and bring down a deer, you deserve a deer.
N. Rodgers: You are right.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm sorry if you're listening to podcast and you're vegan and you're anti-killing animals. I totally appreciate that, and I understand why you would feel that way. But bow and arrow is the closest you're going to get to hand-to-hand combat with a deer.
N. Rodgers: I did some research and what drove this is the fact that on the Sabbath they just didn't want a lot of gunfire.
J. Aughenbaugh: North Carolina has a similar. North Carolina prohibits hunting on Sundays within 500 feet of a place of worship or in any county with a population of greater than 700,000.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which I think would be very few of them.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, very.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it would constitute Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham but big cities. But outside the big cities, that's not what gets you, what gets you is the 500 feet of a place of worship. Don't be shooting your gun off next to a church. What's wrong with you? Or a synagogue or a mosque? It's a place of worship. It doesn't mean just churches. It means all places of worship. Don't be firing guns around here, we're trying to have religious purposes.
N. Rodgers: Again, I was reading and reading both of those, I'm like, I got to throw these in here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or in a county with more than 700,000 people.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're such an arbitrary.
N. Rodgers: But you can tie this back to state government's police power because they don't want guns disturbing people or harming people in a large metropolitan area.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm just going to tell you that if you have ever lived in rural North Carolina and I have lived in rural North Carolina, you hear gunshots all the time on Sundays. Rural North Carolina qualifies, you're not near a church and your place of worship, and you are not in a place with more than 700,000 people. You'll just be sitting on the porch come out, and you're like, well somebody's hunting today. Although we could get into a whole thing about building a deer stand and waiting for a deer to walk by and how that's not really hunting in my mind that's sitting and waiting. It's not really hunting. I understand when people say that's not fair, I'm like, no, that really isn't fair because deer is just walking by. Anyway, so on the other side but what I do think is interesting about the Sunday alcohol laws is that in North Carolina, at least there used to be sections of the store that would get closed off. They had big metal like they're not doors they're screens locked up that would lock off that section of the store and you just couldn't go over there. You couldn't buy wine or beer. Well, no, you couldn't buy alcohol in grocery stores, anyway. Alcohol is only sold at the ABC Store. But you couldn't get beer or wine from those sections. They literally would build the store such that they could close that off and then they didn't have any question of it. The inspectors who came in and checked every once a while find it closed.
N. Rodgers: The store would not run afoul of the law or the regulations implementing the law.
J. Aughenbaugh: You just couldn't go in there and do that.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Again, this is the stuff of constitutional law.
J. Aughenbaugh: A lot of my students struggle with blue laws until I remind them, we have analogs to blue laws that are designed to go ahead and regulate individuals behavior for public health and safety.
N. Rodgers: You want those cigarettes? How old are you? I need to see your ID.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I want to see your ID for alcohol. I want to see your ID for cigarettes. There's certain things you can't buy. In some places, you can't buy lottery tickets unless you're 16 or older.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. I said the only difference between those laws, Nia that you just mentioned and many of these blue laws is that the origin of many of the blue laws was religious in nature. But if today, the religious, if you will, purpose is not the main reason where you have actually a non-religious secular reason, you don't get days off from work without blue laws because that's the evolution of those blue laws. I said for many of you all, you like the day off for a lot of reasons. You want a day of rest or the man can't control every single day of your week. But you should be thinking, okay the religious ancestors of this country because they too thought that having a day off from labor was a good. It was a public good.
N. Rodgers: Built into, I believe all the Abrahamic religions.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Yes.
N. Rodgers: A tradition of having a day of rest. On the seventh day-.
J. Aughenbaugh: You take off.
N. Rodgers: I mean, if God rest, perhaps you should take. That was the thinking. I think that basically the thinking was, if we believe that God is taking a break, then we also should believe that regular humans should take a break. But it is interesting though that what we take a break from is also sin. It's mixed in there together and it's built in there together in sort of the DNA of the country. Then you get unions that are like, well, if we got Sundays off, why not Saturdays too? Why don't we have a whole weekend because the colonies did not understand a weekend. They didn't have weekends.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: They had Sundays. Then every other day you worked.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you think about the origin.
N. Rodgers: Ask a farmer how often they take the weekend off.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you think about the origin of the 40 hour work week.
N. Rodgers: That's straight from unions, isn't it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. But the idea is you have two days off.
N. Rodgers: Days of rest where you can do other things or you could do nothing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Do nothing or whatever. But again, the idea that you take days off because that's good for the person is rooted in many dominant religions. You need to spend time with your family, you need to spend time with your God. You need to reflect. Now many of us are just like, I isn't doing much reflecting on my days off. Okay, fine.
N. Rodgers: You don't have to use it for that, but you have the opportunity.
J. Aughenbaugh: To do it.
N. Rodgers: Yes. Maybe the way you commune with God is to watch football or baseball on Saturdays. Then that's okay too. That's fine too. But the question about this when I was a kid was I didn't understand that you could buy other things on Sundays.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I just assumed you couldn't buy anything on Sundays when I was a little kid. I remember the first time I went with my grandmother to the store on a Sunday after church, she went to get flour because biscuits and my grandmother's biscuits, by the way, were heavenly and divine. But I was like, oh, I was waiting for the cops to show up. I was waiting for it to be a thing. Because I sat in the car, I didn't go in the store because my grandmother didn't believe in taking children into the store. The whole time I thought, this is it. She's never coming back. We're going to prison. It's all over.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then when you get older and you recognize that there are some items you could buy and then others you could not, then you begin questioning, shall we say, the system, because why are those things prohibited? Which I might want to try and use and buy. Where says a whole bunch of stuff that I'm never going to buy, I'm never going to use, I'm never going to consume. Then you start thinking, well, this is unfair.
N. Rodgers: This is a tax on my liberty.
J. Aughenbaugh: Liberty. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then eventually, what happened in North Carolina, at least in some of the counties, was that you could buy beer and wine, but you could not buy liquor. Because the ABC stores just are not open on Sunday.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sunday, yeah.
N. Rodgers: The end of the story. Wait, how is some alcohol okay. Because I promise you that if I chug back an entire bottle of wine, I am going to get smashed. It doesn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You know what I mean, and yet.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: [inaudible] there too with why even within the same category is some, and I'll tell you there were stores. I don't know why my voice just got quiet like I didn't want anybody to ever hear me. There were stores in my childhood that would not sell condoms on Sundays.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Now, as an adult, I think that's the day you want to sell the most condoms, because what you're trying to do is prevent unwanted pregnancy. That's when you want to go all in is over the weekend when people are having their most fun and doing their thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because during the week, again, if you're busy with work and. .
N. Rodgers: Most people are not doing a whole lot of cutting around.
J. Aughenbaugh: But on the weekends, the work weekends at 4:35 o'clock on a Friday, you want money for booze and money for condoms. But come Sunday, you can't buy condoms. So all my effort from the previous 36 hours is for not. What logic is that?
N. Rodgers: Funny.
J. Aughenbaugh: Quite obviously, these are laws being passed by older people who are not having fun.
N. Rodgers: Or older people who don't want us to be having fun.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was the logic of when you were 17, 18, 19 years old.
N. Rodgers: Exactly, that's my 19 year old self, but now my 55 plus year old self. It's like, no, that's actually probably a pretty good idea. Most people don't need to get smashed, and they probably don't need that many condoms. You know what, plan ahead. If you can't plan ahead, you shouldn't be a parent anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're saving them from the worst impulses. Again, we come back to the police power. We have to restrict your liberty.
N. Rodgers: For your own good.
J. Aughenbaugh: For your own good. Because if we give you that discretion, historically, statistically, we know you're going to abuse it. That's the lesson from Blue Laws.
N. Rodgers: It's funny, because really what we should do is do away with Blue laws. We're past that part of our [inaudible] the country, we don't really need blue laws. We don't need to control people's behaviors in that way. If you want to drink alcohol on a Sunday, knock yourself out. Just don't get behind the wheel and drive. That's all we ask. Is don't engage in behaviors where you could harm other people. But beyond that, you're an adult, go do your thing. That's all cool. The part of me is glad that those laws are being done away with slowly as people have realized that there are so many other things that we should nanny state about. We should make sure everybody has housing and we should make sure everybody has food and we should make sure that everybody has an education. We really shouldn't be worried about whether people have condoms and beer. On the list of things to worry about, that is way down on the list to me. Yet there are counties where I drive through and I see things that I know they're closed and I'm like, yep, I'm in that county.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes you are. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Either keep going until you get to the next county or if you're a teenager in those counties, you go across county lines. How many times did you do that? How many times is a young, young Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, heck I remember when-.
N. Rodgers: Get in his Ford Mustang and drive over the state line.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, you're talking about the fact that the drinking age was younger in New York than in Pennsylvania.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was, as my mother would describe me, big for my age. I was driving. I may have broken the law a number of Friday evenings.
N. Rodgers: Well, I will grant you immunity now that you're an adult over those wayward youth moments.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks me. I appreciate that.
N. Rodgers: Well, thanks Aughie. The Blue Laws are fascinating to me in part because of the Supreme Court's decision that even if a law starts off as a religious or starts off based on a religious tenet. But as long as it has a modern secular use or a modern secular reasoning, that doesn't negate the law. It doesn't destroy what came before.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It doesn't make it constitutionally invalid. Again, those are judgment calls. But nevertheless, I did find it fascinating. This was a really fun topic for me to research as demonstrated by some of the tid-bits we shared with you all today Listeners. We hope you enjoyed it.
N. Rodgers: We hope you won't hold it against us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Bye.
N. Rodgers: Bye.
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