You can imagine my shock, disbelief and utter dismay when I read in the paper about proposed legislation for liquor laws in the state. Ten-foot-walls and redefining intoxication? I had to check the date on my paper twice. You see, the prohibitive temperance movement was officially over almost a hundred years ago, and I thought the paper may have been printing historical reports as some type of retrospective.

No, it was true. Our representative in the State Senate, John Valentine, proposed legislation that would require restaurants to pour alcoholic drinks behind 10-foot walls and make it illegal for someone to show any signs of being drunk, effectively eliminating casual drinking and the Utah restaurant industry.

As a citizen represented by Sen. Valentine, I would hope that he would do everything that is required to kill this backward-looking and damaging legislation to the people of Utah and, more importantly, the people of Orem whom he represents.

Because he is a state legislator, I have to assume he is aware that the state of Utah depends on the sale of alcoholic beverages for almost $100 million dollars in revenue that funds our state budget and other special earmarks for things like school lunches. This doesn't take into account the hundreds (if not thousands) of people on state payroll who depend on the (mostly) free flow of liquor for their livelihood. Further restricting access to alcoholic beverages would obviously reduce the amount of revenue our great state could depend on in an already stressed economy, but it would also increase the unemployment rate and lead to all kinds of excess crimes from otherwise law-abiding citizens importing alcohol from neighboring Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado.

Add to that all of the dwindling profits from restaurants that serve drinks with food and don't have the room to add 10-foot walls (there are more than a dozen in Orem alone) and you have unemployment rates increasing, as well as a decrease in local and state tax revenue.

It seems to me that Sen. Valentine is probably not a stupid man and he understands the ramifications of this legislation and he knows how damaging it would be to our state and local economy. I assume he realizes that Gov. Huntsman would never sign it and his constituents (like myself) would never stand for it.

The only assumption then that I can make is that this is political grandstanding of the highest order, and as his constituent, I would hope that he votes to kill this bill and quietly get back to work supporting efforts to progressively liberalize the responsible consumption of alcohol for the good of our great state and community and their respective economies.

And after all, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said, "Beer is proof that God loves us"? I'm with the founding fathers on this one.

• Bryan Young is a resident of Orem.