Utah Politics/Region

[Jeremy Bowers]

Sasha Pachev wrote:

> In what way would a legislation against public consumption of alcohol 
> interfere with another's right to worship? Ok, Catholics and a few 
> others need wine for their sacrament. There can be an exception for 
> them. But it seems that we are so anxious to make that exception that 
> we are happily selling beer at gas stations and supermarkets.
>
> We should be careful not to upgrade one's right to party however they 
> please to their right to worship however they please :-)
>
The primary reason to not legislate alcohol consumption is because most 
people (outside of Utah anyway) don't consider it wrong.   I personally 
don't think it is wrong to have a beer after work and millions of others 
would agree with me.  Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine.  
He also served bread and wine at the last supper.  It would appear that 
He didn't think it was morally wrong either.

Instead of trying to ban all alcohol maybe we should address the real 
problem.  Why not ban drinking and driving?  Oh, already taken care of.  
How about underage drinking?  Wait, we have laws against that too.  Even 
public drunkenness is against the law.  These are the kinds of things 
that we should be (and are) banning.  I think, for the most part, our 
alcohol laws are just fine the way they are.  They allow people to drink 
if they want to, and protect everyone against the consequences of too 
much drinking.  Obviously laws get broken, but outlawing alcohol is not 
going to change that fact.  In fact I think it would make the situation 
much worse.

Now, I'm not trying to come down on you for not drinking.  I think that 
that is admirable.  I, myself, abstain from alcohol as well, (although 
for admittedly different reasons), but just because a group of people 
doesn't like something is no reason to outlaw it entirely.

--Jeremy