Church, State, and Kmart
One of the oddities back in NY, state, but also city, was the “blue laws”, laws that precluded, for example, bars opening before noon on Sundays. What’s so special about Sundays? For non-church-going Christians, anyway? Many of these regulations were holdovers from mixing morality and legislation, but they never interfered much with commerce. (Well, what, in America, does?)
Here in NSW, the government intervenes directly, making Easter a mandatory no-shopping day, because it’s Easter. Yea for the churches! (N.b., for everybody else, your own sacred days are managed at your own discretion; but if any Muslims really want to shop at Myer on Sunday, it’ll be open in the CBD.) This 1950’s mentality is just silly. I’m all for controlling against the rise of rapacious capitalism as anyone, but shuttering businesses – who would, if open, have to pay their employees at penalty rates – because it’s Easter, or Good Friday, or Christmas – isn’t really about making sure everybody gets a day off, it’s enforcing observation of a Christian canonical day of observation. And I’m against laws that effectively join church and state. The exemptions just how hollow the whole thing is anyway.
And is it really no coincidence that Joe Tripodi’s both the Minister for Regulation and the MP for one of the exempt “zones”?
09 April 2009
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3 comments:
As with most of the 10 Commandments, the idea behind "Keeping Holy the Sabbath Day" was a humane directive.
EVERY person should have one day per week that should be given over to rest, relaxation and yes.some contemplation. It's HEALTHY!
If some communities want to designate one Healthy day for everyone, and you want a different day, get a different job, move to another community or negotiate.
The point of it all is that such a day SHOULD be required
Yes, and those are weekends, public holidays, and annual leave - 20 days of it. We also have long-service leave, which means another 20+ for ten years' at one employer, both of which latter are paid out if you change jobs or at retirement/termination.
Compare the public holidays celebrated in the USA: New Year's Day, Presidents Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and, finally, Christmas - the only non-secular public holiday - and in Australia: New Year's Day, ANZAC Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Queen's Birthday (not even her real one; it's Victoria's), Labor Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day. Of the 8, 4 are associated with religious observation, although I'm not sure what's being observed on Easter Monday. It think it's just because they can't legislate Sunday as a day off when it already is.
Nobody outside Israel is legislating for Yom Kippur, are they? Or Eid, or anything else.
You want public holidays, fine, but some of us would like to use that time for things we don't have time for otherwise, and that might include visiting some big-box stores. Forcing businesses to shut down or curtail their trade is legislating morality and unnecessarily.
N.b. pubs here run bottle shops, but not on Good Friday - and that day alone - by law, even though they're otherwise serving the suds.
It's all counter-intuitive and counter-productive.
I'd weep and cry for those whose holidays are only Sundays so they can't go shopping but we all know they can go at other times, anyway. As for curtailing drinking for one day...surely there's a more important cause to get behind than this.
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