Blue Laws Some Still Enforced

I thought I would do a little change up from the norm and write about one of those funny areas in the world that not to many people think about in law. Yet that is exactly what they are "laws" that make hardly any sense yet still could be enforced. They are known as blue laws.

State and local regulations banning various activities on Sundays are called "blue laws." The origin of the term is uncertain. It has been said variously to have originated in the color of the paper on which a code of laws for the early New Haven, Connecticut, colony was printed or to have derived from the concept of being "true blue" to the law. Whatever the origin, these measures, which are based on the biblical injunction against working on the Sabbath, have been traced back to fourth-century Rome, when Constantine I, the first Christian emperor, commanded all citizens, except farmers, to rest on Sunday. The first blue law in America was enacted in the Virginia colony in the early 1600s and required church attendance.
About three-fourths of the states still carry on their books laws imposing some kind of Sunday restriction on such activities as retail sales, general labor, liquor sales, boxing, hunting, or barbering, as well as polo, cockfighting, or clam digging. These laws have been challenged in federal courts as a violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. The Supreme Court has upheld them, starting with McGowan v. Maryland (1961), ruling that though the laws originated for religious reasons, the state has a right to set aside a day of rest for the well-being of its citizens.
Nevertheless, Sunday blue laws have declined since the 1960s. A number of states have repealed them, and many municipalities have long ignored those still on their books, simply choosing not to enforce them.

The city fathers in Clinton, Oklahoma have banned local men from masturbating while observing a couple making love in the back seat of a parked car in a drive-in theater.

In North Carolina, it's illegal for a man to peep through a window at a woman—yet it's not against the law for a woman to peep into a room occupied by a man. (Nor is it a violation of the law if a man peeps at another man.)

In Nebraska, buggery, or anal copulation, can bring a whopping 20 years in the penitentiary. And buggery in Pennsylvania can bring transgressors a $5,000 fine and 10 years at hard labor.

Indiana and Wyoming both have laws against anyone's enticing, alluring, instigating, or helping a person under 21 to masturbate. This activity is known in legal circles as an act of "self pollution."

No one may have sex while riding in the sidecar of a motorcycle in Norfolk, Virginia, where an old ordinance outlaws anyone from doing so while cruising down a city street.

It's "an excusable act of passion" in Colombia, South America, for a man to murder his wayward wife when he finds the woman in bed with her lover. If the husband "personally witnesses the corrupt sexual activity," he's allowed to shoot his unfaithful spouse. Such adultery-related homicides aren't even prosecuted.

Women who go out on the streets alone at night in Kansas City, Kansas, can be arrested under an obscure 1901 city ordinance. Any unattended females can be picked up by the police if they are "in the streets or any public place without lawful business and without giving a good accounting of themselves."

An old law in Cattle Creek, Colorado bans a man or his wife from making love while bathing in any lake, river or stream. In other words, anyone who wants to fool around while bathing must do so in a tub, or not at all.

A man can be incarcerated for from one-to-10 years in an Arizona or Washington, D.C., prison for causing his wife to be a prostitute. A man can also get 10 years in Arkansas and 20 years in Maine and Michigan for placing "his spouse in a brothel." In Missouri, it's a "high misdemeanor" for a fellow to "force" his wife to sell sexual services on the streets.

In Skullbone, Tennessee, the law bans a woman from "pleasuring a man" while he is sitting behind the wheel of any moving vehicle. Any man stopped and found with the front of his pants undone can be fined a minimum of $50 and serve 30 days in jail.

These are just a few blue laws that I recently came across, yet if you are as bored as I sometimes get it is fun to see what you can find. I think the funniest part of blue laws is that they are just that "laws" until they are removed by a court of law. Which means by that law you can be prosecuted for a blue law and sometimes saved by one too.