North Dakota Lawmakers Want Women to Get Back in the Kitchen and Make Them Some Breakfast

(They are definitely going to spill orange juice in their bed. nd3000/iStockPhoto)

People have always been sexist and racist, but most of them used to try to cover it up a little bit, because they knew they’d face severe personal and professional censure if they were just overtly sexist or racist in public. Lately it seems like it’s open season for douchebags, though, and it’s to the point where actual lawmakers, in an actual legislative session, feel totally comfortable getting up in front of everybody and saying that women should get in the kitchen and make their husbands’ breakfast in bed.

Over in North Dakota, the legislature was debating a repeal of the state’s “Blue Laws,” which are laws designed to enforce religious behavior. They cover things like when stores can and cannot sell alcohol, and whether or not stores are allowed to be open on Sundays. Many states have them, and North Dakota’s are widely considered to be the strictest in the country. In North Dakota, a lot of things can’t be sold at all on Sundays, and stores can’t open until noon. The legislature was thinking of getting rid of those rules, but apparently some Republican representatives like them, because they argued that the laws should stay on the books because women needed a break from spending all their husbands’ money, and they should be making their husbands breakfast in bed, anyway.

Extra Crispy’s Maxine Builder writes that represetnative Bernie Satrom said stores didn’t need to open, because women should be using Sunday mornings “Making him breakfast, bringing it to him and then after that, go take your kids for a walk.”

Representative Vernon Laning wasn’t about to let Satrom be the only dude making “take my wife, please!” jokes on the legisislature floor, so he piped in with his own Open Mic routine, opining that: “”I don’t know about you, but my wife has no problem spending everything I earn in six and a half days, and I don’t think it hurts at all to have a half day off.”

As gross as that its, it is also completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not stores should legally be required to be closed on Sunday mornings. Even if you want women to make breakfast in bed, what does that have to do with the stores? Do single people have to make breakfast in bed for somebody? Why should everyone have to deal with not being able to shop on Sunday mornings just because Bernie Satrom and his wife don’t want to.

If you don’t want to shop on Sunday mornings, don’t. But what on Earth does that have to do with ordering all the stores to close? That’s like if I said that I didn’t like cilantro, so I wanted to make it illegal for anyone to have cilantro. (Sit down, Rick Santorum, I’m actually talking about the herb this time, not using cilantro as code for anal sex, but the sentiment actually works both ways, because anal sex is another thing politicians shouldn’t be able to ban just because they don’t want to have it.)

Apparently “women be shopping too much” is an effective rhetorical device in North Dakota, because the repeal failed in the North Dakota House of Representatives

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