Blue Laws of Conneticut
Blue Laws ---or statues of extreme rigor ---were to be found both in Europe and in all of the American colonies. They obviously could not be enforced with literal serverity, and they generally fell into disuse after the Revolution. Connecticut’s Blue Laws received unpleasant notoreity in the Reverand Peters’s General History of Connecticut (1781) which fabricated decrees as "No woman shall kiss her child on Sabbath or fasting day." But the valid laws of Connecticut, some of which are here reproduced with biblical chapter and verse, were harsh enough . How did the punishment fit the crime? Which offenses would still be regarded as criminal today?

 

1. If any man or woman, after legal conviction, shall have worship any other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.
(Deuteronomy 13.6. Exodus 22.20).

2. If any person within this colony shall blaspheme the name of God, the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, with direct , express, presumptuous, or high handed blasphemy, or shall curse in the like manner, he shall be put to death. ( Leviticus 24, 15, 16.)

3. If any man or woman be a wicth, that is, has or consults with a familar spirit, they shall be put to death. ( Exodus 2.18 Leviticus 20.27. Deuteronomy 18.10.11)

4. If any person shall commit any willful murder, committed upon malice, hatred, or cruelty, not in a man’s just and necessary defense, nor by casualty (accident) against his will, he shall be put to death. (Exodus 21.12.13.14. Numbers 35.30.31)

5. If any person shall slay another through guile, either by poisoning or other such devilish practices, he shall be put to death. ( Exodus 21.14)...

10. If any man steals a man or mankind and sells him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be put to death. ( Exodus 21.16)

11. If any person rise up by false witness wittingly and of purpose to take away a man’s like, he or she shall be put to death. (Deuteronomy 19.16. 18. 19)

14. If any child or children above sixteen years old, and of sufficient understanding, shall curse or smite their natural father or mother, he or they shall be put to death, unless it can be sufficiently testified that the parents have been very unchristianly neglient in the education of such children, or so provoked them by extreme and cruel correction that they have been forced thereunto to preserve themsilves from death or maiming. ( Exodus 21.17. Leviticus. 20.9 Exodus 21.15)

15. If any man have a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient understanding and years, viz. sixteen years of age, which shall not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, he will not harken unto them; then may his father or mother, being his natural parents, lay hold on him, and bring him to the magistrates assembled in court, and testify unto them that their son is stubborn and rebellious, and will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son will be put to death. ( Deuteronomy 21.20, 21)