It Is a Religious Measure
By William Mayhew Healey
Protesting that It Is Not, Does Not Change the Fact — California Has a Law Giving One Day in Seven — What the Need of a Sunday Law?
For more than thirty years, California has had no Sunday law. The state enforces no religion or religious forms, but nowhere are religious worshipers better protected. The maximum penalty for disturbing a religious meeting, of any denomination, on any day of the week, is a fine of $500 and six months in jail. Such liberty of conscience seems to have annoyed a few, as it did many people in the Dark Ages, and they have sought to have some kind of Sunday law enacted. They first asked for a law that would bring back the "Puritan sabbath of our ancestors" — the kind that compelled all to attend church on Sunday, or if absent from church, and unable to give an acceptable excuse, to pay a fine sometimes of a few pounds of tobacco. CAN NOT DISGUISE THE RELIGION
Meeting with general opposition to this kind of law, they declared they did not want a Sunday law for religious purposes at all. Mr. G. L. Tufts, representing the advocates of the Sunday law, urged members of the legislature of 1913 to support his Sunday bill, which he declared was a temperance measure for the purpose of closing saloons one day in the week. He publicly denounced those who opposed him as being allies of the slums and working for the saloons. Failing to get the desired support, he drafted another bill, and exempted the saloons and the liquor traffic from its provisions, and tried to have it adopted. He found but little support for his bill from either the temperance or the liquor interests. By declaring that the proposed Sunday law is in no way religious, but only a civil law, to obtain rest for the working people, its advocates found a little comfort from a small class of laborers, by whose influence and signatures they succeeded in getting a mongrel Sunday measure on the initiative ballot. Mr. G. L. Tufts is lecturing through the state, and saying, "There is nothing religious about the proposed law." F. B. Perry, president of the California Federation of Journeymen Barbers, says, "We want you to understand that this is not a religious law, but a civil enactment for a day of rest." The argument favoring the law, printed by the state, over the signature of State Senator William Kehoe, says, "It is neither a religious measure nor a 'blue law.'" If there is nothing religious about this law, why need its advocates continually cry, "It is not! It is not!" Mr. Kehoe says, in his argument, "Every civilized nation on the globe sets aside Sunday as a common rest day, and none has been so bold as to claim that in so doing religious or blue laws are being enforced upon the people." Why do the senator and others need tell us that such laws are not religious, if no one ever said they were? This kind of argument is like a woman making public announcements in words like these: "I want it understood that I am not bad, and nobody ever said I was." Evidently the senator should be better informed on this subject; for thousands of people have called these Sunday laws religious laws, and the essential elements of the one proposed on the initiative ballot are religious. If it were purely civil in its nature, there would be no demand for it, as the state already has such a law, and has had for twenty years. See California Statutes of 1893, page 54, and read "An Act to Provide for a Day of Rest from Labor": "Section 1. Every person employed in any occupation of labor shall be entitled to one day's rest therefrom in seven, and it shall be unlawful for any employer of labor to cause his employees, or any of them, to work more than six days in seven; provided, however, that the provisions of this measure shall not apply to any case of emergency." If all that is wanted is a civil rest day for each week, why do they not demand it, if necessary, under this law? Observe, the present law does not specify that Sunday shall be the day of rest above other days, while the initiative proposition does. The present law has no element of persecution in it, as it gives the privilege of rest to all who desire it, but does not compel those to rest who do not choose to do so. The proposed law denies such right of choice. WHY NOT SELECT A SECULAR DAY?
If they desire a day set apart for civil, secular purposes only, why have they not selected one of the six days that they call secular, instead of taking the only day they consider religious, and set it apart for a purpose that "has no religion in it"? Political elections are civil matters. Why not try to have them fixed by law to come on Sunday, because more people are idle on that day than at other times? Protests would come from these same advocates of Sunday rest against the desecration of Sunday sacredness in thus using it for civil, secular purposes. If this proposed law has nothing religious in it, why does it require persons, in order to get a certain exemption, to belong to a "religious society"? Why the expression, in the bill, "some other day than Sunday as its day of worship," if there is nothing religious about it? It is a well-known fact that Sunday is a religious institution, and resting from ordinary secular labor is an essential element in its religious observance; and any law, regardless of what name is given to it, that enforces such rest, is supporting a religious institution and church dogma. If any choose to rest on Sunday, that is their civil right; and the same rule of liberty gives others the civil right not to rest if they so choose. Vote against No. 45. Our present law protects all in a weekly rest day, without the elements of religion and persecution contained in the proposed law.