Punished In Bible Belt

I have the misfortune of living in Bible belt. In doing so I have to knowingly give up various rights that others in America enjoy. Today was a reminder of this.

Today I attempted to break the law. I did so inadvertently, but my attempt was noticed and I was punished for it.

I was in a supermarket and purchased $300 of groceries in time for Christmas. Among those purchases was 12 bottles of beer. When I took them to the register I was informed of my transgression and was told that I must wait until noon until she could ring them through. So I was forced to stand there holding up the line from 11:58am to 12:01pm before her register would allow the sale to go through.

So thanks to this crazy law prohibiting the sale of alcohol between midnight Saturday and noon Sunday I had three minutes of my life stolen. So did the people in the line behind me.

I assume that this law was designed to ensure people were sober in church. However, in this day and age I can fill my fridge with alcohol at any time so nothing is going to stop me going to church drunk if I want to. All this law does is create inconvenience for people. It is time to take ridiculous and archaic laws off the books and allow people to buy alcohol as and when they choose.

It is not the place of the government or the state to try and impose moral and religious beliefs on others with laws like this.

In other crazy Tennessee news, they have an interesting separation of beer, wine and liquor here too. I can buy beer or so called malt beverages in the supermarket but not wine. I can go to a liquor store which by law must be called a Package Store. In this package store I can buy anything that is not beer and contains at least 1% alcohol. This means that I can buy some Everclear (containing up to 95% alcohol) but I cannot buy some coke to dilute it or some chips and dip to serve with it. If I buy a cocktail mixer in the same store it will contain 1% alcohol even though I plan on mixing it with tequila. The same law prevents me from buying a corkscrew in the same store because it too doesn't contain any alcohol. It is also a legal requirement that whatever I buy be wrapped before I leave. I cannot pick up a bottle of champagne and walk out with it even if my car is right outside. The bottle must be placed in a brown bag.

The sooner these old white men that are in charge die off and a younger generation take over and sweep out all these old cobwebs the better.