I'm not well-educated in law, of course, nor do I wish to be. I have enough bullshit in my world already.
You really didn't need to tell us you were "not well-educated in law", your ignorance was already abundantly clear and you have made it clear again in this nonsensical post.
I know nothing he said suggested the slippery slope, you did...and still are.
The problem that I pointed out is similar to the slippery slope issue but not the same. The slippery slope argument is that A will lead to B at some point in the future. The problem I pointed out is that invalidating blue laws (or anything else) on the basis that it has "some religious justification" would also invalidated a whole host of other laws CURRENTLY. There is no "will lead to B at some point in the future", it is a current issue.
You want Blue Laws invalidated. Ok, on what basis?
Now in THIS post you finally rearranged it as:
Each state needs to have a spring cleaning of it's antiquated, bullshit laws that never got around to being dissolved.
That is a political rather than a legal argument. You are entitled to your political opinions and I think most all of us would agree with the general point here but the problem is the specifics. As soon as you start actually doing away with specific "antiquated" laws you'll run into opposition from somebody. Upthread
@betarhoalphadelta pointed out that liquor store owners in Georgia mostly FAVOR the blue laws. I was thinking that they probably would. It gives them a day off with no competitive disadvantage (unless they happen to be REALLY close to the border of a state without a similar law).
MY point is that in cases in which you have non-religious reasons to keep a law, that's what you use. Any religious reasons are moot. We can GET RID of them.
You can't actually get rid of the religious reasons. Look at the Murder example. I would assume that pretty much all religions prohibit Murder so there are likely Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddist, etc reasons to have laws against Murder. You can't just wipe those away. They exist independent of the legal system.
The problem with your formulation here is that even if I cleaned it up into something resembling "legalese" it would effectively make the Establishment Clause moot.
A cleaned up version of your formulation would be along the lines of "Any statute lacking a non-religious purpose is invalid as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment".
The rather obvious problem with this formulation is that any half-wit attorney could come up with SOME non-religious justification for almost any law, for example:
There is no non-religious reason for businesses to be closed on Sundays. There's no reason for any business to be closed on any particular day of the week. They are private entities and are free to be open or closed on any day(s) they wish.
On Libertarian grounds I agree with this and I know that
@betarhoalphadelta will as well since he tends to be our resident Libertarian. However, that is only one political point of view. There are LOTS of non-religious reasons to force businesses to close one day a week. For just one example, there are Labor reasons. The Teamsters might support a law to get their members a day off. That is just one, but I only need one. Under the formulation that you created one non-religious justification is sufficient. I'll add this, if you've ever dealt with an alcoholic or anyone with a substance abuse problem, they tend to be REALLY bad at planning ahead. Consequently, while blue laws are a minor inconvenience for most of us they actually DO serve a non-religious purpose with regard to alcoholics. The rest of us simply learn to buy beer on Saturday if we want to have a beer while watching an NFL game on Sunday. Alcoholics might think of that but then they'll run out and end up short of booze when the liquor stores are closed. From a public health perspective, the blue law serves a societal good in that instance because then the alcoholic is forced to dry out and confront the situation that they've descended into. I'm not saying that I agree with the above argument. I personally tend to lean toward "Live and let Live" Libertarianism but my or any of our personal beliefs are irrelevant. Legally the issue is simply whether or not a non-religious reason exists and I just gave one for blue laws.
No, let's let the establishment clause get in the way of common sense.
You may not realize it, but you are arguing against your own position here. The Establishment Clause IS what limits Governmental authority to enact religion.
To get Bibical, there is a scriptural admonition "to not cast your pearls before swine" or to go secular, "Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it."
You are right of course and we both could have predicted this ridiculous off-topic response:
I'm a pig because I don't believe in god and think blue laws are garbage and should be dissolved.
OINK OINK OINK
LoL.
