Rely on Baptists to throw a cold bucket of backward moralist water on all things potentially cool and convenient relating to booze—and in this case, we're talking about a bill that would allow wine to be sold in grocery stores. The very blood, people, if you believe.
Lonnie Wilkey, editor of The Baptist & Reflector, a Tennessee Baptist Convention mouthpiece, wrote this opinion piece, cloaking weird Puritanism behind the veil of law and order. His argument: Sell wine at your local Kroger and our streets and sidewalks will fill with drunken drivers and soused, red-lipped teenagers.
Now all you really need is common sense to realize how inane this argument is. I'm skeptical about whether Wilkey believes this himself. I've been that teenage kid out for booze in states on both sides of the aisle, and I'll tell you, grocery store or liquor store, it doesn't really make a difference.
Like most of the rest of the world, I don't view wine through the judgmental lens of the Moral Majority. I look at it as just another food group. It sure would be nice, when I'm loading my cart up with bread and fresh meat, if I could pick up a bottle or two of vino along the way.
