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2003-10-08 - 10:38 a.m.

Rules To Keep Us Safe

Our forefathers saw fit to lay down some rules. Rules and laws, after all, help keep us safe. So Thomas Jefferson, et al, set about writing up a few for us. Then came subsequent generations of law makers, and instead of adopting logical laws and writing rules to protect us against government, these mental giants have penned regulations for every thing from how we dress to how we have sex.

Some dress decrees are downright dumb.

In San Francisco car-wash attendants can’t use old underwear to clean or dry cars. And forget wearing cowboy boots in public in Blythe, California, unless you own at least two cows. In North Dakota you can wear cowboy boots to town, but it’s against the law to fall asleep in bed with them on. If you live in Phoenix and are male, you must wear pants when in the city limits, and in Tucson it is illegal for women to wear pants. Men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown in the state of Florida. Women in Kentucky can not appear in bathing suits on highways, unless they are: escorted by at least two police officers; armed with a club; lighter than 90 pounds or heavier than 200 pounds. In St. Louis, on-duty firefighters can’t rescue women wearing nightgowns; to be rescued, a woman must first make sure she is fully dressed.

Animal behavior and the treatment of animals have also come under the rule-making pen of Big Brother.

• You can’t eat a snake on Sunday anywhere in Kansas. Nor can you shoot rabbits from a motorboat in Kansas.

• In California, animals are banned from mating publicly within 1,500 feet of a tavern, school or place of worship.

• It is illegal in Ohio to get a fish drunk. It’s also illegal to feed alcoholic beverages to a moose in Fairbanks, Alaska.

• Educated dogs are against the law in Hartford.

• Without a permit, you are not allowed to own a mongoose in Hawaii.

• Monkeys are forbidden to smoke cigarettes in South Bend, Indiana.

• It is illegal to ride a mule down Main Street in Lang, Kansas, in August, unless the mule is wearing a straw hat.

• It’s illegal in Maryland to mistreat oysters.

• Using a lasso to catch a fish in Tennessee is illegal.

Although women have been allowed to vote for 83 years, we’re still the victims of some bizarre laws.

In Florida, women can be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer, and a special law prohibits unmarried women from parachuting on Sunday. A man in Arkansas can beat his wife, but not more than once a month. In Kansas, a man’s mistreatment of his mother-in-law can not be used as grounds for divorce, and in Kentucky is it illegal for a woman to remarry the same man four times. In Missouri, women are prohibited from wearing corsets in Maryville 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 Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive by herself; “a man must walk or run in front of the vehicle, waving a red flag in order to warn approaching pedestrians and motorists." Women in Minnesota risk up to 30 days in jail if caught impersonating Santa Claus.

The original lawmakers in this country created The Bill of Rights as “what the people are entitled to against every government on earth,” but the Johnny-come-lately morons have managed to invade our bedrooms, the backs of our cars and our pig and sheep bans with their law books.

• If you live in Florida and own a porcupine, it is illegal to have sexual relations with the animal.

• In both Florida and Washington, D.C. all sexual positions except the missionary position are illegal.

• However, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, it is legal to have sex in a parked car. Any suspicious officer who thinks sex is taking place must drive up from behind, honk his horn three times and wait approximately two minutes before getting out of his car to investigate behaviors in the parked car.

• Following love making in Ames, Iowa, a man can not have more than three gulps of beer while cuddling in bed with a woman.

• Bozeman, Montana, has a law banning all sexual activity between members of the opposite sex in the front yard of a home after sundown—if they’re nude.

• State law in North Carolina mandates all couples staying in rooms for one night must be kept in a room with double beds, the beds kept a minimum of two feet apart, and making love on the floor between the beds is forbidden. It is also illegal to have sex in a North Carolina churchyard.

• Men in Oregon can not curse while having sex with their wives.

• In Michigan, it is legal for a farmer to “sleep with his pigs, cows, horses, goats and chickens.”

There should be rules against this nonsense!

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