Just to save a little face here, there are plenty of educated and enlightened areas in Alabama. For instance, Huntsville has more rocket scientists and engineers per capita than almost anywhere else in the US. That said, there certainly are large wastelands of backwoods and backwards thinking people in this state.
These laws won't stand for ever. I imagine in the next 5-10 years we will get rid of the stupidest laws - most importantly the anti-homebrewing and bottle size law. I moved here in '93 from PA and back then the laws were even worse. It was only in the last 3 years or so that the abv limit was raised from 6% to 12% (or, it may be 13%, can't recall.) So things are changing. No offense to the homebrewers out there, but I hope the bottle law changes first (no beer in bottles larger than 12 oz). Homebrewing is pretty easy to hide and well tolerated by most people I've ever known and I have never heard of anyone who was actually arrested for homebrewing. I did know one guy who got harassed but he had an article in the LA times which featured his name, face and address. Hell, believe it or not we have homebrewing shops that operate in the open in Huntsville so there's a blind eye that is turned toward it.