Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 27, 1995 TAG: 9511270087
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
So it would appear, at least, from the infrequent mentions of the commonwealth in a compendium of ``Dated, Frivolous and Unnecessary Laws in the United States.'' The listing can be found in a book, ``Legal Briefs,'' by Michael D. Shook and Jeffery D. Meyer. Though most of the cited laws are not enforced, they haven't been overturned or repealed, according to the authors. A sampling:
It's illegal to doze off under a hair dryer in Florida; to slap an old friend on the back in Georgia; to walk down the street with your shoelaces untied in Maine; to gargle in public in Louisiana; to play dominoes on Sunday in Alabama; to sneeze on a train in West Virginia; to set a mousetrap without a hunting license in California.
In Kentucky, it is unlawful for a female to appear in a bathing suit on a highway unless she is escorted by two police officers or is armed with a club. State statute dictates that only a female horse can be ridden near a church while services are in progress.
In Boston, any pickle for sale must bounce 4 inches when dropped from waist height. Car-wash attendants in San Francisco are barred from using castoff underwear as car-wiping rags. Throwing rice at weddings is illegal in Chillicothe, Ohio. Cicero, Ill., forbids humming on the street on Sunday. Storing snowballs in a refrigerator is illegal in Scottsbluff, Neb.
In Greenville and Beaufort, S.C., it is against the law for roosters to crow before sunrise; and in Little Rock, Ark., dogs can't legally bark after 6 p.m. Cats are not allowed on a bus in Seattle, Wash., if a dog is already aboard.
In Alexandria, Minn., it is against the law for a man to make love to his wife with the smell of garlic, onions or sardines on his breath. In Hastings, Neb., law prohibits even married couples from sleeping together in the nude in hotels.
Not surprisingly, many antiquated laws are sexist. (Roanoke apparently had one prohibiting women from going to saloons for the purpose of buying intoxicating beverages or loitering. The city attorney says there's no such law now.) In Norfolk, a law requires women to wear corsets while in public. In Maryville, Mo., law decrees women can not wear corsets because ``the privilege of admiring the curvaceous, unencumbered body of a young woman should not be denied to the normal, red-blooded American male.''
In Tremonton, Utah, it is illegal for a woman to have sex with a man while riding in an ambulance. If arrested, she can be charged with a sexual misdemeanor and her name is to be published in the local newspaper. The man, quaintly enough, will not be charged, nor will his name be revealed.
Archaic statutes linger in dusty law books, forgotten and ignored, merely dead letters from the past. Some may have been purged from law books but not yet from computer databases. Even so, an interesting question is why some of these were passed in the first place.
We could cite cultural traditions that patronize women, and a national fixation on adjudicating minutiae of morality. But also relevant, perhaps, is America's abundance of lawyers. Today, with 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has 70 percent of the world's lawyers.
by CNB