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North Dakota Reps Argue Blue Laws Should Remain So Women Make Their Husbands Breakfast

One representative, Bernie Satrom, shrewdly saw the attack on the blue laws for what it was: a liberal attempt to smack the skillet out of his wife’s dish-soap-chapped hands.
Photo via Flickr user vauvau

Lawmakers just wanted a little breakfast in bed…

Lawmakers in North Dakota on Sunday battled over whether to keep the state's controversial "blue laws"—considered the most strict in the land—which effectively force the state's retailers to close until noon every Sunday. Under the laws, anybody who opens a business to the public on Sunday morning is committing a class-B misdemeanor. The regulations are so strict that news stories have found it necessary to point out that the rules do not apply to hospitals.

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The debate has garnered attention nationwide, less for the laws' repercussions for local businesses than for the wholesale airing of misogyny which presaged the vote on the House floor.

One representative, Bernie Satrom, shrewdly saw the attack on the blue laws for what it was: a liberal attempt to smack the skillet out of his wife's dish-soap-chapped hands. For Satrom, Sundays are better spent the way God (also a man) intended: "spending time with your wife, your husband. Making him breakfast, bringing it to him in bed and then after that go take your kids for a walk."

Representative Vernon Laning loved what he heard, cottoning onto Satrom's regressive gender politics and really running with them.

"I don't know about you but my wife has no problem spending everything I earn in six-and-a-half days," he said, we assume trying his damnedest to keep from breaking into a Tim Allen-esque barking fit, "and I don't think it hurts at all to have a half day off."

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North Dakota's Valley News Live reached out to the North Dakota Women's Network, where a representative described the exchanges—her exhaustion pretty much palpable—as "regrettable humor."

The local news site also managed to track down Representative Laning, who stressed that the comments he made about how he feels about women and his wife were "not indicative of how he feels about women or his wife," according to Valley News Live.

This story does have something of a surprise twist. In a last-minute session Monday, the House re-voted, with pro-business interests swaying enough lawmakers to repeal the law 48-46. Now the vote goes to the Senate, where we're sure they're already preparing their most offensive stand-up routines.