Via YoursDaily.com:
In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys.
That’s right. Alabama is a vibrator-free state!Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. But the Alabama Legislature, in its infinite wisdom and in the spirit of protecting citizens from moral turpitude, a while back banned the sale of sex toys (or “marital aids” as some lawmakers coyly call them).
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a gleam of interest in this controversial state law, which has been challenged in Alabama courts by adult toy retailer Sherri Williams. She has been fighting the law for nearly 10 years.
Williams has been in district court three times on this issue and has won twice. But both times her victories were struck down by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. She filed a petition to the Supremes and has hired well-known First Amendment rights attorney Paul Cambria. Also joining in the appeal petition with Williams are the Free Speech Coalition and the First Amendment Lawyers Association. Read more…
(h/t the Alabama Yankee transplant Blue Gal who refused to write this post on the grounds that to do so may incriminate her. :) )
Filed Under: Civil Liberties, Religious Right, Right Wing Stupidity, Torture, Wingnuts
2 Trackbacks To “Oral Arguments On Alabama Sex Toy Law May Reach Supreme Court“
Ummm… a Hello Kitty sex toy???? You have got to be kidding me! And I think I might just have that thing tested for lead.
What is the justification for banning a legal product. If you don’t like vibrators, don’t buy them. Let the free market speak for itself.
Oh, I see the problem now… perhaps it is just a spelling error on the part of the Alabama legislature. Marital aid rather than martial law toy…???
BTW, make love, not war. :)
No, no, that’s a Hello Kitty *massager*.
This issue also raised its ugly “head” in South Carolina:THE RIGHT TO ‘BARE’ SEX TOYS
I’m sorry, but for some reason, I find the Hello Kitty vibrator more disturbing than the AK-47…
I find it so pathetic that the party of ‘keeping gov’t off our backs’ cannot stay out of the bedroom. What is up with that?! Grow up already!!!
Strawberry @ 6:
Oh yeah, marketing to the 5-10 year olds?!?!
Maybe if they sold more of the kind on the left-hand side, so many people wouldn’t feel the need to use the ones on the right-hand side…
Just sayin’…
And almost every movie out there markets Ak-47s and similar “toys” to kids, especially the ones aimed (okay, don’t pardon the pun) at young audiences.
I’d rather find a vibrator in my kid’s closet than an assault weapon.
I really, really, really wish the inbred hick South would just secede from the U.S.
Filed under the “torture” category….oh very funny.
Blue Rose @ 8:
How about a “Hello Kitty” with an AK-47?
Look, I’ve got nothing against vibrators, dildos and other sex toys…hell, like Bluegal, I’m rather a connasuer, but I draw the line at Hello Kitty.
Ozymandius @ 13:
Yes. The solution is to see a pink Hello Kitty AK47, & a fully automatic assault vibe.
Don’t be mean, Dr. Matt. Alabama has brought you the great American intellectual Helen Keller. She was a formidable advocate of the ACLU in its early stages. There’s also a line of blue counties, a blue belt if you will, running from Mississippi to Georgia. It’s not all inbred.
See, this shit is why I left my native southland and moved to the northeast. If these red state rednecks were half as afraid of endless wars and spiraling debt as they are of an orgasm we would be well on our way to a truly advanced civilization. As far as I’m concerned they can just sever everything south of the mason dixon line to the Texas border with New Mexico and push it into the Atlantic.
Cut the dead weight and lets advance as a peoples.
Accepting one underlying theme is sex and violence, I thought this Carlin quote appropriate…
People much wiser than I am said, “I’d rather have my son watch a film with 2 people making love than 2 people trying to kill one another. I, of course, can agree. It is a great sentence. I wish I knew who said it first. I agree with that but I like to take it a step further. I’d like to substitute the word Fuck for the word Kill in all of those movie cliches we grew up with. “Okay, Sherrif, we’re gonna Fuck you now, but we’re gonna Fuck you slow.”
Dr. Matt @ 11:
they would, but they don’t know how to read so they can fill out the paperwork.
Oh god NO! - not ORAL arguments!
I want a pink Hello Kitty sex toy . . . .
*
Kay @ 2:
Perfectly stated.
*
Mel @ 16:
Yea, for every one of these examples one could site a hundred examples of cross fires, gay bashing, christofascisim, and knuckledragging. I agree with Matt, let the south go, they are an anchor on a potentially advanced civilization…Again, I say this as a native southerner who spent most of my life in the south surrounded by these backwaters. I wish everybody who wanted to could escape the south as I have.
Hello Kitty or Hello Pussy?
“free market”? Is that the one that Rupert Murdoch owns and the DEA enforces?
As a citizen of the blind state of Alabama, this is just another example of reasons why we appear stupid and ignorant in the eyes of the country, and the world.
Our state is sooo churchy, yet as of 1998, we have the 4th highest divorce rate in the country (and not one of those was a gay divorce)!!! Alabama people don’t drink…in public (only in the privacy of our own bedroom, thank you very much). When we buy alcoholic beverages at Wal-Mart, we are sure to cover them with clothing when we head to the checkout (someone might SEE and know that we are sinners!). If we ever do get up the courage to buy alcohol, we always have to stock up on Saturday, because in many parts of the state, we still cant buy booze on Sunday (THAT would be a sin!).
As long as our state continues along this hypocritical course, we are forever doomed to relive the past. Organized religion has TOO much power in general, especially in the state of Alabama.
To the rest of the country; feel free to continue to view our state as backwards and prejudiced…I certainly do. Let the incest jokes begin!!
The Hello Kitty product is labeled as a “massager,” but many sex toy shops sell them. I doubt that they’re marketing them to 5-7-year-olds; Hello Kitty is actually rather popular with young women in Japan.
I don’t see how Alabama could possibly defend banning sex toys. They could try to argue that the dongs are pornographic, but still, I don’t know a state where porn is banned. Even if they could do away with the obviously penis-shaped products, where are they going to draw the line when it comes to personal massagers? Where does the back massager end and the clitoral joy device begin? A lot of things vibrate. Maybe they should ban electric toothbrushes and cell phones. Or removable shower heads. Or shaky laundry machines. (My friends and I were too young to buy adult toys at one point; we knew how to get creative.)
Not that there aren’t men who own sex toys, but perhaps, to be fair, Viagra, hand lotion and Girls Gone Wild should be banned too. I can’t imagine Alabama has anything more important, like, I dunno…making sure its children are literate to worry about.
Perhaps they should bring back sex toys and encourage their use as an alternative to pre- or extra-marital sex.
COOL! GUNS! GUNS! YEAH! HEH!
Huhuhuhuhuh. She said “oral arguments.”
Trittydi @ 20:
IMO, any time anyone buys something Hello Kitty, a butterfly dies a painful meaningless death.
Butthead @ 28:
heheheheheheh-except, the concept of making a federal case over sex toys seems more anal to me-heheheheheheheh.
In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys. That’s right. Alabama is a vibrator-free state!
So cell phones on silent vibrate. Guess that’s a paddling.
Thing Fish @ 31:
Using a cell phone to get off AND getting spanked for it? Don’t get me too excited. :)
EinGrundZurPanik @ 26:
What you said makes sense, that’s why they do just the opposite! Naturally, if it’s something that give a woman pleasure it’s bad (altho most of those items are unisex!). ;)
This might be enough for Clarence Thomas to write his first opinion.
If vibrators are illegal in Alabama, other things beginning with the letter V should be banned as well, starting with the male marital aid known as Viagra.
I think you are all missing the more important point.
Alabama was forced to put this in place many years ago.
You see, the place was already overflowing with dildoes;)
bluegal @ 29:
I agree - the commercialism out there is just so depressing. But I can’t bite the hand that feeds me (advertising) and it does employ a lot of folks up and down the manufacturing / retail / marketing line. I just have no interest in jumping on the bandwagon (I think it started when my parents refused to buy me a Barbie doll when I was a kid - at the time I felt rather deprived but later I could appreciate my parent’s rationale of all the accoutrements >expense
The righties addiction to bedroom Sharia knows no bounds
feel free to continue to view our state as backwards and prejudiced…I certainly do. Let the incest jokes begin!!
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Well, I live in Texas, and we have a quite a few dumbass religious nuts here as well. Hopefully, no one from here will ever win an important national election…………………………………………oops.
It is ok to F@#$K up someone, not F@#$@K someone.
In Europe, films block out the violence and leave in the sex
In the USA, the *censors* block out the sex and put in some MORE violence.
Or perhaps you may have seen a nipple being pixilated on Butcher90210 so you don’t get offended when someone’s daughter is having her tits CUT OFF or something.
LA LAW, CSI, MURDER (Real People’s Death’s REALITY SHOW) COURT SHOWS, COPS running 4 times a DAY.. ULTIMATE FIGHTER, JACKASS..America’s funniest home videos of people smashing their nuts on things - pretty funny. aaaarrmmm what else.. OH perhaps we could get someone to hang off an elastic band while they eat a bulls anus for $25K.
YEP…. Sounds like ROME to me.
And why do we hate the FRENCH so much, oh the threesome thing perhaps.!
It is medication TIME, Mr McMurphy.
Put your nose bags on and eat your popcorn and shut up and watch the movie will ya!
We can go shopping later!
Thank God!
- JJ
LEGALIZE MARIJUANA!
It’s the right thing to do.
Maybe if the sold Vibrators in the shape of a crucifix it would be ok with the folks in Alabama ;)
nsr @ 34:
:lol: Heh, he has actually written opinions.
But make no mistake, if this case goes to the Supremes, it just might mark the truest test so far of our liberties under the Roberts Court.
Consider: In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down all the sodomy laws, declaring protection for the gay community (and drawing a dissent from Justice Scalia so rabid that one gets the impression he had written it with his head actually spinning……but I digress). The ultimate ruling was 6 to 3 to strike the laws down, but not all six of the justices agreed on the rationale. Justice O’Connor, whose departure ushered in the dreaded era we’re now likely to suffer, would have struck down the laws based on Equal Protection Doctrine. (In other words, although sodomy laws were ostensibly applicable to everyone, there would be an inevitably disparate impact on gay people.) Five others, however, simply struck the law down as an unconstitutional infringement of simple liberty interests. Those five — the Lawrence Five — are still on the Court: Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer and Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy wrote the decision.
Now, to those less versed in the nonsense that is Constitutional interpretation, it might seem perfectly reasonable to strike down the law as an unconstitutional violation of basic liberty. But basic liberty is not protected under current interpretations (told ya it was nonsense!). No, for an unenumerated right to be protected, it must be fundamental; otherwise, you’re screwed (particularly in a sodomy case (apologies)). The radical departure from precedent and the embrace of common sense was the catalyst for Scalia’s rage, for Kennedy had drafted a decision that shed the traditional paradigm of judicial scrutiny of unenumerated rights, and had the audacity to declare — at least within the context of homosexuality — that the mere belief that something is “immoral” does not justify its prohibition.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s methodology was never particularly lucid, and no judge since then has known quite how to use Lawrence as precedent. I fear we may be on the verge of finding out, and I’m not optimistic about the answer. Kennedy has several times proven to be pro-gay rights. Lately, however, his pivotal votes have demonstrated that he is not pro-civil liberties in general, despite the language he employed in his potentially revolutionary Lawrence decision.
But I suppose I’ll not give up hope. Should Kennedy clarify, or allow another of the Lawrence Five to clarify, precisely what Lawrence means, and strike down this pernicious interference with the pursuit of happiness, we’ll have a better sense of the state of freedom in America. If he joins the RATS wing of the Court, well, we’ll know for sure that the Roberts Court is the one the Authoritarians have longed for.
There’s only one solution: the iDildo: it also shoots bullets and has internet capability.
I’m a native Alabamian living in Alabama; I’ve also lived in Chicago, New York, Arkansas, South Carolina, Connecticut, Louisiana, Kansas, and Florida, and I’d like to say I also wish the inbred redneck hicks to secede. I’d also like to point out their native territory extends far beyond the Mason-Dixon line.
Can my comments by held against me in a court of law? Because I can testify that I have made…oh, not quite a half-dozen trips to one of Birmingham’s adult literature emporiums over the past 15 years, at least two or three of them since the law has been passed. To my admittedly inexpert eye, this establishment seemed to be suffering no lack of marital aids. There may be jurisdictions in the state where commerce in such items has been completely shut down by force of law, but the city of Birmingham would not appear to be one of them. I can’t say what anyone else’s experience has been, but to say that one cannot purchase a vibrator in Alabama is simply untrue; illegal, perhaps, but certainly selectively enforced. It’s a story that deserves a great deal more serious coverage than the state could allow itself.
The South……we should force them out of the union! They are nothing but inbred filth.
IMO, any time anyone buys something Hello Kitty, a butterfly dies a painful meaningless death.
I agree, “Hello Kitty” is pretty disturbing…
This really is almost straight out of the Meese Commission, which also sought to ban all sex toys.
what will they ban next bratworst and chili bricks? the horror!