The Blue Laws

It was not surprising that the solid citizens of Massachusetts continued to tolerate and pay lip service to the obsolete Blue Laws, as long as the stricter provisions of these laws went unenforced. After all, these same citizens have long tolerated some of the most inefficient and corrupt government in the United States.

What is unusual, however, is that even when an ambitious attorney general began to enforce the letter of these laws, and consequently to infringe on the occupations and recreation of many people, no action was taken for repeal. Certainly, this summer in his vigorous clampdown on Cape Cod businesses operating on Sunday, and again this fall, in his treatment of entertainments on certain holidays, attorney general Edward J. McCormack, Jr. emphasized better than could any sociological investigators the obsolescence and irrelevance of these laws.

Like the human appendix, the vestigial Blue Laws, often painful in their enforcement, ought to be removed. In an earlier time, the approval of a majority of the populace may have provided these statutes with a just raison d'etre. Now, the lack of consent among that same majority has transformed them into nothing but a source of irritation and laughter. Only two groups remain to defend what have become really illegitimate impositions on the rest of the state. The first, the minority which believes militantly in the faiths which formerly predominated in Massachusetts society, still refuses to recognize that most citizens no longer observe its orthodox strictures. These people will never tolerate, for example, the majority opinion that the closing of a bar early Sunday morning will not result in the damnation of a man's soul.

The second group comprises the politicians who have continually added to these laws, even as recently as this year. If asked in private, few of these solons will deny the absurdity of their legislation. Yet assembled, none of them will show the courage needed to propose a thoroughgoing re-evaluation. Included in this second group is McCormack, who has adopted the I-don't-make-the-laws-I-just-enforce-them approach, which conveniently absolves him of responsibility in the eyes of most of the electorate.

Because of the position of these two groups--the intolerance of the first and the reluctance of the second--and, more important, because of the apathy of most citizens, the Massachusetts Blue Laws remain the lever by which the social and religious dogma of the few is

Let the defending minority abide by its own principles. But do not let these principles continue to be imposed on the whole of a society which no longer subscribes to them. The archaic Blue Laws are a legislated nuisance to most people. They should be abolished.