PolicyGuy

Monday, January 22, 2007


No Alcohol in the Communion Wine?
Laws governing the consumption of alcohol can be very strange. The latest: a proposal in Nebraska that some people feared would forbid teenagers from taking communion.

The legislator who proposed the bill said that his goal was simply to tighten controls on underage drinking.

Sen. Lowen Kruse "said he assumed common sense would prevail — and the tiny amount of alcohol offered at communion would not rise to a criminal offense."

Now, however, public concern about overzealous prosecution prompted a revision in the bill:

"His revised version would likely allow minors to consume up to two ounces of alcohol as a part of a religious ceremony.

That would expand the exemption to Jewish ceremonies conducted at home, said Kruse, a retired minister in the Methodist Church, where grape juice is used in ceremonies."

(Lincoln Journal-Star, "Kids could drink communion wine, after all.")

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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