I agree with Wooten?
This week flew right by. I was totally oblivious to its pace, only realizing today was Friday when I opened this morning’s @ issue section in the AJC to see Jim Wooten’s weekly roundup. I actually flinched, “JESUS, Wooten! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
As usual I either disagree with or am highly suspicious of every word in his column, but there was one paragraph with which I whole-heartedly agree:
Winn-Dixie’s Save-Rite store is gone from my neighborhood. It had slashed prices on food items while posting signs declaring that Georgia sets a minimum price for selling beer and wine. For goodness’ sakes, repeal the law. The state has no business establishing minimum selling prices for anything.
I’d like to think that Wooten’s position is one of opposition to the legislation of morality, a truly moderate position. And regulating the price of alcohol is exactly that, legislating morality. Georgia has always loved to force its way into its citizens’ personal lives. If someone can explain to me how no packaged alcohol sales on Sunday is not a religious law, I’d like to hear it. Gay marriage? Sodomy?
Alas, I don’t imagine Wooten gives two squirts about the moral implications of alcohol legislation. In this case, the government was impeding the free market, a sin on par with raping and murdering children to conservatives like him.
Regardless, I just wanted to point out that I agreed* with something Wooten wrote even if it was probably for totally different reasons.
* – Full disclosure, I usually agree with what he has to say about transparency and opposing government secrecy as well, but don’t tell him I said that.
I totally agree with you on the “legislating morality” thing. I’d always believed that was the reasoning behind the vote to “define marriage.” It was never to keep hot dogs from marrying Volkswagons, or whatever balogna they were claiming would come out of gay marriages.
But the sad thing to me, and what’s not mentioned in your post, is that it’s not just an ambiguous “Georgia” passing morally based legislature…it’s us. The people of Georgia, even in the seemingly homo-friendly confines of Atlanta, voted overwhelmingly for the marriage definition. So I don’t know if you’re going to get too many people (besides myself) sharing your outrage about that type of legislation. Apparently, the majority of Georgians like to have the government make laws to shape their morals for them. Which sucks eggs.