Today’s post isn’t mean to incite, rather to make one think.  When you think of small town America, sometimes the mental image of the folk who live there being like the citizens in the movie “Footloose” comes to mind.  Then an article will come out which confirms your suspicions of rural America and their puritanical ideas on ideas like religion and alcohol.

Currently Georgia is one of only three states that have a total ban on alcoholic beverage sales at stores on Sundays. Indiana and Connecticut are the others.  There is yet again another push to change this law that is working its way through the Georgia legislature.  If it fails again this year, it’s doomed for next year too since 2008 is an election year and no politician will touch a pro-alcohol-related bill with a 10 foot long chastity belt.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “polls show overwhelming support in metro Atlanta for a bill that would let voters decide whether stores can sell beer, wine and spirits on Sundays”.  So it wouldn’t be a statewide repeal of letting stores sell alcohol on Sundays.  It simply would allow each municipality to vote on whether or not they want to allow it. 

But here is where the huge disconnect with a metro area like Atlanta and rest of the state exists.  It sort of reminds me of Chicago, where rural southern Illinois detests The Big City although they don’t realize The Big City is what keeps the state running in terms of economic growth.  I'm sure that all of non-metro-Atlanta Georgia views Atlanta, much like rural Illinois considers Chicago, a godless cesspool of iniquity.  “An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll in January found that 68 percent of respondents statewide supported giving voters the chance to consider Sunday beer and wine sales at grocery and convenience stores. About 80 percent supported the concept in metro Atlanta. Only a little over half did so in South Georgia. Support dropped to under 50 percent in Middle Georgia, home of Gov. Sonny Perdue, who opposes the bill.”

If you go to a town like Blackshear, Georgia, it sounds as though the village is inhabited with pro-prohibition folks who would petition to put Molly Hatchet on a stamp.  The article references quotes from citizens and business owners who give us insightful quotes such as "There's nothing good in alcohol" and "Sunday is a holy day. One of the Ten Commandments is keeping the Sabbath holy."

I really didn’t want to drag religion into any blog topic, but this issue goes hand in hand with it.  "Rural Georgia doesn't want this bill," Jim Beck, president of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, said after the bill passed a Senate committee last week. "This matters to values voters. If you buy your groceries at Piggly Wiggly, you get your hair cut at the barber shop and you go to church on Sundays, this bill matters."

"It's not that I am trying to force my faith on anybody. I believe strongly in the separation of church and state," he said. "But I also feel I have a moral obligation to make people aware that there is a better way."

And that, my friends, is where I call Bullshit on wankers like this.  They are trying to force their moral values on the rest of the population.  What I fund amusing about the prohibitionist fundamentalist Christians is that, while it truly is their prerogative to not imbibe in alcohol, their own Lord and Savior, Jesus Horatio Alberto Christ the First, turned water into wine to keep the party going!

Yes, alcohol, when abused, has detrimental qualities.  But so do trans-fat loaded donuts.  So do nicotine-filled cigarettes.  So do sodas jam-packed with high fructose corn syrup that are liquid diabetes in a can.  Somehow all of these are available to purchase on Sunday.  While it can be a minor pain sometimes to not be able to purchase alcohol on Sunday, it’s not a huge effort to simply plan ahead and get it before midnight on Saturday.  But that’s not the point.  Since you can go to a restaurant or bar or arena on Sunday and buy an alcoholic drink, one should logically be able to purchase those drinks to take home too.  Is the Christian Coalition FOR drunk driving?  Obviously that’s a stretch in terms of linking things together but it bears analysis.  Since they want to continue to force people to drive on Sunday to get alcohol outside of the home, their logic is flawed when they try to invoke buzzwords like “safety” or “plan ahead”.

And what exactly is meant by “keeping the Sabbath holy”?  Is it for Catholic priests to keep their cocks out of boys’ orifices on Sundays?  Is it for Baptist wifebeaters to give their wife’s face a day’s respite from the back of their hand?  Is it a day where televangelists limit their exploitive techniques in garnering money out of poor families that can’t really afford to be giving donations to their multi-million dollar industries?  I hate to break it to these holier-than-thou folks, but as a non-churchgoing Christian, I am going to get to the same place in the afterlife as them and I’m not even giving anything up for Lent.  In fact I’m going to drink moderately (with a few brain-killing blowout bashes in between), I’m going to watch curse-filled movies, and I’m going to take the name of the Lord in vain when a driver pisses me off.  I’ve seen a lot of porn and witnessed orifices being stuffed with many items, I don’t give 10% of my earnings to the church, and yes, there’s a damn good chance I might STILL be ahead of you in the line to talk to St. Peter when I finally kick the oxygen habit.

So just let me and my liver-addled brethren buy our friggin’ beer on Sunday and no one will get hurt.  And leave God out of the discussion, since using him is simply a smokescreen to impose your Puritanical values.

Cheers.