I decided I'd go do my grocery shopping this morning. You know, while everyone's in church. Judging from the amount of people at the store however, there are plenty of people not in church. On the one hand I'd prefer an empty store. On the other, glad to know I'm not alone. Whether it's because they're atheists, or some other religion, or just maybe don't care, is not possible to know. What I do know is, that I really like Blue Moon Beer with pizza. And since I was going to pick up a pizza for dinner tonight, I was going to pick up some beer too. I don't drink very much. A six bottle pack of Blue Moon will last me a month or maybe more. I have it with spaghetti and pizza, because it goes well with it. We drink wine on occasion too, in the European sense, if it goes with the food, we drink it.
So, I am on my way to the alcohol section, which is quite large at this particular mega-grocery store, and in the back of my head a nagging little voice said, "Ah! But it's Sunday, you can't buy beer." I'm from North Carolina, where you can't buy beer before 2pm in most counties, and in the rest you can't buy beer at all. I used to work in a grocery store, so I remembered this. I thought, nah, that was years ago, surely I can buy beer on Sunday here. Well, I can. After noon! I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of the stupidest laws I have ever had the displeasure of coming across. It doesn't make any sense. I can buy beer at 12:01pm on Sunday but not at 11:59am. Why? Because a bunch of religious fanatics at some point decided that it would be good for all of us if we couldn't drink alcohol with our pizzas. Why is this still a law in the 21st century?
I mean, we're not talking about even drinking the beer before noon, which I could do if I wanted to go out Saturday night and stock up on it, if I were so inclined. I'm talking about doing my grocery shopping for the week! The beer would be for this evening, or tomorrow. It's a stupid and retarded law, and should be repealed.
Apparently in Georgia you can't buy alcohol at all on Sundays, so it could be worse. An online petition has almost 53k signatures to repeal the law.
I tried to find a list of which states allow alcohol sales at what time, but I guess it's so complicated no one has made one. I did find a site that has current laws about hard liquor. I know in some states it's by county, which makes it even more difficult to catalog who does what, when.
My problem with this is that I live a long way from the grocery store, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to buy beer, unless I want to waste gas going back to the store this afternoon, and I'd rather not do that. There are obviously plenty of people here who aren't Christian, so why are we run by them? If they don't want to buy alcohol on Sunday, then they don't have to. If they own a store that sells alcohol, they don't have to be open if they don't want to be. I'm fine with that. However, when I go grocery shopping, I should be able to buy whatever the store has when I'm there, not have to shuffle my schedule around because of some antiquated laws.
We have a saying in our house--where similar blue laws are on the books. "If you buy Beer on Sunday, You will make Jesus Cry." Unless of course he comes down to make water into wine, and then its okay--if you are one of those bloody Pagan-Catholics.
ReplyDeleteAlso I cannot take my small children into a liquor store to buy what I like to drink, which is hard cider and meade. Which are only sold in Liquor stores--I live in a very uncultured place. Why? Because if you buy alcohol in a shop that sells alcohol while your children watch, they will grow up to be godless alcoholic slatterns. It pisses me off. Because how often do you see a man with a baby on the hip grocery shopping and wanting to buy their alcohol for the month? One more way to practice the subtleties of sexism if you ask me. That way I have to ask the Head of the Household who is like Christ to the Church to buy my brew. So--could be worse. Oh yea and you cannot leave children in the car, because some morons will just leave them there, in the hot sun to cook while they wander the aisles.