Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton Newsgroups: ont.general From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton") Subject: Re: Sunday shopping Message-ID: <89Dec20.143442est.11061@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto References: <656@crk56.bnr.ca> Distribution: ont Date: 20 Dec 89 19:35:26 GMT Lines: 38 jmberkley@watnext.waterloo.edu writes: >Why is it unjustifiable to guarantee a commonly shared day off? Justify *enforcing* this kindness upon your lucky beneficiaries. And what guarantee? If we want to work like dogs, we can; most of us don't work in a corner store or sell shoes. We may demand a premium, though not exactly because of ancient superstition. If I want to go to the office and work on Sundays, I certainly can. If I want to work on my home all day, I certainly can, but every once in a while, you'll stop me for need of a bit or wood or glass. If I want to go shopping with the family, I can't. If I want to go out with my wife to look at dishwashers, I can't. Just exactly what is all this accomplishing? Are communities elsewhere in pandemonium for lack of Sunday shopping laws? Isn't the bottom line of our particular law that there is the usual self-righteous religious motivation for the current state of affairs? Christianity is theoretically about sharing and selfless generosity, but once brought to power it has usually meant forcing a narrow point of view, intolerance included, down everyone else's throats. The list of examples runs from prayer in school, through sexuality, abortion, and on to the support and content of our schools (especially in Ontario), and back through the practises of churches and religious communities over the last centuries. It follows from relentlessly, single-mindedly deciding what is best for everyone else. rmberkley, yours is an example of the christian attitude in practise, par excellance, though it may or may not be religiously rooted. In practical christianity people are told over and over that it's a really great thing not to question what they already believe. Should anyone be surprised at the outcome? Once the obvious wonderfullness of supposedly doing nothing on Sundays IN PARTICULAR is taken out of the equation what are we left with? I suppose it's people having time off that they can count on, on a roughly weekly basis? We already mandate something almost like this, on an annual basis. Cannot we find something that will work on a more short-term basis that is not steeped in religious intolerance? Are there no practical alternatives to the situation at hand that will *survive* into the the years after 2000? The current law is scarcely surviving today.