Blue Law

Blue Laws

Contracts are very important in society today. There is a contract pretty much with anyone you work for or have working for you and there's a contract to pretty much everything you buy. Since the eighteenth century in certain areas there are to be no certain secular activities on Sunday. Certain areas feel very strongly on no secular activities on Sunday mostly because Sunday is known as the holy day of the week.

The first Blue Law in America was enacted in Virginia in 1617. The Blue laws enforced church attendance and forced colonists to attend church. The name Blue Laws was derived around 1781 by a man named Samuel A. Peters. There was a list of the stiff Sabbath Regulations in New Haven, Connecticut. The list was printed out onto blue paper. Another way that the name came about was based on an 18th-century usage of the word blue meaning "rigidly moral" in a disparaging sense. Blue laws are popular in bible-orientated communities, which are pretty much religious communities. Blue Laws actually prohibit regular work on the day Sunday. It also forbade any selling, traveling, buying, sports, or public entertainment.

Blue Laws have been operating to protect the Christian business owners from competition on their Sabbath. Yet the Blue Laws do not protect Jews and Muslims on their Sabbath day which is Saturday. This almost makes it racist towards other religious groups that are not Christian. It wasn't until the nineteenth century until the Blue Laws got rid of the mandatory church attendance on Sunday due to the fact that it violated the citizen's rights. Besides the church attendance Blue laws have stayed around even into today's modern era. The sale of house wares such as pans, pots, washing machines was banned on Sundays in Texas until 1985. Texas to this day has car dealerships still running under Blue Laws which mean there is to be no sales of automobiles on Sunday's. Today Sundays are the second busiest day of the week for shopping. Yet today a lot of areas prohibit the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Certain states have eliminated uniform laws regulating Sunday activities and allow counties and incorporate cities, towns, and villages to adopt their own religious ordinances under what is called local option.

Blue Laws have been around for a long time but it seems the longer time goes on the less and less of Blue Laws we actually see in effect. Courts in New York and Connecticut have ruled that, because blue laws were created and propagated by religious groups for religious purposes, they are unconstitutional. Although in the areas that still have Blue Laws you can be fined or imprisoned for breaking the laws. Religion has always been a big deal to the citizens in this world and Blue Laws were made to make sure everyone was religious even though it was racist to other types of religions that holy days were other days then Sunday.

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