With four New Orleans Saints home games approaching, the Baton Rouge Metro council is tackling the issue of whether or not to open the city’s bars for Sunday business. Under current “blue law” statues, the codes governing the sale of alcoholic beverages in the city and parish, the sale of liquor and beer in bars on Sunday is prohibited, as is the purchase of hard liquor in stores.
Councilman Mickey Skyring has proposed an ordinance to suspend the regulation for each game the Saints play in Baton Rouge. This follows last year’s suspension of the rules to allow bars to be open on Super Bowl Sunday.
Naturally, we support this measure. Most blue laws are reminescent of the great 19th century moral crusade for Prohibition, although not as a terrible. The Sunday closing law is an antiquated notion, a throwback to the time when the only businesses open on the Sabbath were churches and family restaurants. This, as we see all around us, is not the case today.
Let us look beyond whether or not blue laws are necessary for today’s society and return to the issue at hand – the Saints. Opening up the bars on Sunday’s will allow those who prefer not, or simply cannot afford to watch the Saints in Tiger Stadium to see the game in comfort – an amount that we assume will include some students. This minority will also do much in the amount of money they spend, which, as anyone who has ever watched a game in a bar can attest, will be considerable, but also in the sense of spirit they will provide to a franchise.
We acknowledge there are fears that students will abuse this change in the law and neglect their Monday studies. We believe this is simply not true. We point out the fact that in the city where the Saints have played for years, the colleges there have not fallen into utter ruin due to some of the considerable indulgences over the weekend.
The Metro council should pass this exception, as it did for the Super Bowl. While nothing is certain, we are rather positive civilization will not break down, and students and citizens will return to work and school the next day, little worse for the wear.