[MR] RE: Illegal to hold meetings in costume

[Towey, Brian]

People, please!

This is supposed to be funny!  Farfetched.  Amusing.

I know that humor doesn't always carry well via email, but this article was
on a Web site called DUMBLAWS.COM!  Page after page of stupid, pointless,
obsolete, and obscure statutes from around the country.

In South Carolina, according to DumbLaws.com, you are still required to stop
before driving your car into a four-way intersection and fire a gun into the
air to warn approaching horsemen.  This law is not enforced.  But it is
still on the books.  Funny, no?

"So," I think to myself, "what stupid laws do we have here in the Old North
State?   Hmm...  Illegal to hold meetings in costume?  Why, we do that all
the time!  I should send this to the Merry Rose Tavern so everybody can
enjoy the drollery."

So, everybody stop taking this so seriously!

Now, that being said, what gives the humor its edge is that laws are no
joke.  It's very naive to say something like, "That law is only targeted at
the KKK," as though the law knew or cared whom its original target was.
Once a law is passed, it applies to anybody the prosecutor darn well wants
it to.  Like RICO being applied to protestors.  

Could some hypothetical DA who took an irrational dislike to the SCA argue
that our costumes "conceal the identity of the wearer?"  Yes, absolutely.
Would the judge buy it?  Maybe.  Stranger things happen in courtrooms all
the time.  That's why the joke is funny: It is just barely possible that
this could apply to us.  Not likely, thank goodness, but not impossible.

So, please, please, stop mistaking this foolery for a serious warning.

And, whatever you do, don't carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket in
the state of Georgia.  It's illegal.

-Charles Fleming