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The Daily Utah Chronicle

The University of Utah's Independent Student Voice

The Daily Utah Chronicle

The University of Utah's Independent Student Voice

The Daily Utah Chronicle

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Want your voice to be heard? Submit a letter to the editor, send us an op-ed pitch or check out our open positions for the chance to be published by the Daily Utah Chronicle.
@TheChrony
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Take your sidecar and shove it?

By Lauren Mueller

A romp through Pioneer Park at midnight must be Bobbie Coray’s idea of a good time, because if this liquor control commissioner gets her way, we’ll all be brown-bagging by next year.

In an act that could successfully move Utah a few backward steps closer to the stone age, Coray is urging her colleagues to review the possibility of a new statute requiring all visible liquor bottles to be covered in restaurants so as not to offend some of this state’s more pious diners.

According to the commissioner, this “Zion Curtain” will allow Utah eateries to serve alcohol to deserving gentiles, while simultaneously shielding their LDS patrons from the potentially offensive sight of alcohol.

This initiative has received relatively little press given the unlikelihood that any such measure will ever come to pass, even in the conservative, values-centered halls of the Utah Legislature.

However, the mere proposal of such a mandate seeks to divide and marginalize both sides of our community — the secular and the faithful.

Although the founders and original leaders of the LDS Church might have dreamed of a purely Zionist utopia, the march of time and the unification of the 50 states invalidated that hope long ago.

LDS customers are not so delicate that the sight of alcohol will force them running from The Cheesecake Factory. More to the point, not every legal drinker is one gin and tonic away from total mayhem.

The desire to homogenize American culture is apparently not limited to chinos and lattes. This sick need to eradicate any and all conflict or source of disagreement is unhealthy and unnatural.

Coray defended her proposal in The Salt Lake Tribune. “We have a dual responsibility. We are to make alcohol available for those who want to consume it and at the same time not make anyone uncomfortable,” she said. Really? We do? I had no idea the government’s chief responsibility was to assuage their constituents’ awkwardness. But if that’s the case, I want a partition around President Bush, livestock of any kind, Baby Gap and unusually large goldfish.

This is Utah and I’ll accept that I can’t get a real drink in a restaurant or a “private club for members.” If I want porn, I have to make it myself, and don’t even think about smoking a cigarette in an open-air public park. If I know Utah politicians, we won’t be sacrificing advertising dollars in the name of “good taste” anytime soon.

We don’t need pieces of legislation to protect our sensibilities. This country is not a nation of grade-schoolers. What we need is properly maintained highways, well-funded public schools and the like.

Coray might dream of a world in which anything deemed morally questionable has gone the way of full-strength beer. Hopefully, that’s what distinguishes appointed officials from the ones we elect.

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