Post by smartarse on Jun 4, 2006 16:09:01 GMT 10
Heres another piece of evidence to support the cliche that truth is stranger than fiction.
I was reading the latest edition of Mother Jones and i came across this little gem - a section of which i'll copy in here:
Business has been good since Pleasures opened in 1993. Sex toys fill a lucrative--and increasingly mainstream--niche of the multi-million-dollar-a-year sex industry (just visit Amazon.com if you're in doubt). But Alabamans who take for granted the right to invade their own privacy in the privacy of their own homes may soon have to look farther than their friendly neighborhood sex shop:
[glow=red,2,300]In February, a federal district court upheld a 1998 state law that criminalizes the production and sale of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." [/glow]
The statute was ostensibly intended to eliminate nude dancing, but in the fine print, it also criminalized the distribution of sex toys. (Its sponsor, Democratic state senator Tom Butler, insisted that a zealous district attorney had put in the anti-sex-toy language.) Violations carry fines of up to $10,000 and up to one year of hard labor.
This latest ruling may signal the end of Williams' long fight against a law she says smacks of puritanical hypocrisy. For eight years, she, a handful of sex-toy users, and a woman who hosts Tupperware-style adult novelty parties have been the lead plaintiffs in an ACLU-backed lawsuit challenging the ban as a violation of constitutional privacy rights. Similar bans have passed in Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, but Williams has become perhaps the most vocal sex-store owner to challenge such laws.
Williams' case has prevailed twice in district court, but the state has appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in turn has overruled the plaintiffs and bounced the case back to the district each time. (So far, the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case.) In his brief supporting the ban, then-state attorney general Bill Pryor argued that "the commerce in sexual stimulation and auto-eroticism, for its own sake, unrelated to marriage, procreation, or familial relations is an evil, an obscenity ... detrimental to the health and morality of the state." In the latest decision, a district judge concluded that, morality aside, the Alabama law "does not offend the human dignity" of sex-toy sellers and therefore was not unconstitutional. The appeals court is expected to weigh in one last time by this fall. Williams says she isn't holding her breath for a victory. "I may finally be dead in the water," she concedes.
Kushner, David, "Bad vibes", Mother Jones, May-June 2006
I was reading the latest edition of Mother Jones and i came across this little gem - a section of which i'll copy in here:
Business has been good since Pleasures opened in 1993. Sex toys fill a lucrative--and increasingly mainstream--niche of the multi-million-dollar-a-year sex industry (just visit Amazon.com if you're in doubt). But Alabamans who take for granted the right to invade their own privacy in the privacy of their own homes may soon have to look farther than their friendly neighborhood sex shop:
[glow=red,2,300]In February, a federal district court upheld a 1998 state law that criminalizes the production and sale of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." [/glow]
The statute was ostensibly intended to eliminate nude dancing, but in the fine print, it also criminalized the distribution of sex toys. (Its sponsor, Democratic state senator Tom Butler, insisted that a zealous district attorney had put in the anti-sex-toy language.) Violations carry fines of up to $10,000 and up to one year of hard labor.
This latest ruling may signal the end of Williams' long fight against a law she says smacks of puritanical hypocrisy. For eight years, she, a handful of sex-toy users, and a woman who hosts Tupperware-style adult novelty parties have been the lead plaintiffs in an ACLU-backed lawsuit challenging the ban as a violation of constitutional privacy rights. Similar bans have passed in Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, but Williams has become perhaps the most vocal sex-store owner to challenge such laws.
Williams' case has prevailed twice in district court, but the state has appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in turn has overruled the plaintiffs and bounced the case back to the district each time. (So far, the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case.) In his brief supporting the ban, then-state attorney general Bill Pryor argued that "the commerce in sexual stimulation and auto-eroticism, for its own sake, unrelated to marriage, procreation, or familial relations is an evil, an obscenity ... detrimental to the health and morality of the state." In the latest decision, a district judge concluded that, morality aside, the Alabama law "does not offend the human dignity" of sex-toy sellers and therefore was not unconstitutional. The appeals court is expected to weigh in one last time by this fall. Williams says she isn't holding her breath for a victory. "I may finally be dead in the water," she concedes.
Kushner, David, "Bad vibes", Mother Jones, May-June 2006
