Alabama's Bad Vibrations

Alabama's ban on sex toys is no laughing matter.

Ever since that state approved the Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act in 1998, which prohibited the sale of "any device designed or marketed as useful for the stimulation of human genital organs," humorists have mocked the statute while many Alabamans with common sense have tried to downplay its significance. In 1997, the District Attorney of Madison County, Tim Morgan, told reporters that enforcing the ban was "a pretty low priority" and contrasted dildo dealing with "real crimes" that needed prosecution, while the conservative-leaning Press-Register of Mobile has called for repeal of the law on the grounds that it "makes Alabama look foolish." However, after an eleven-year court battle that climaxed on September 11, 2009, when the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the law in Love Stuff v. City of Hoover, Alabamans who sell sex toys -- even inside so-called "adult oriented" businesses -- face up to a year in prison and a $10,000 fine. Repeat offenders risk a ten year prison sentence. Opponents of the measure should not take this judicial defeat lying down. Whether the law is enforced, its very existence is likely to deter businesses from selling such toys and to deprive the women and men of the Yellowhammer State both freedom and pleasure. However, since the Alabama legislature has insisted on making sex toys a matter for public debate, progressive Americans ought to accept this challenge to debate such devices on their merits. I suspect most people, and most Alabamans, view sex toys as a social good. I am confident that, in the marketplace of ideas, sexual pleasure will trounce Puritanism -- and almost everything else.

Alabama's crusade against sex toys actually began as an effort by State Senator Tom Butler of Madison to ban nude dancing. Why precisely Butler objected to a naked foxtrot is not so clear, but even he admits that his effort spiraled out of hand. That was largely the work of two misguided individuals. One of these men is a fire-and-brimstone Baptist preacher named Dan Ireland who runs a letterhead organization called the Alabama Citizens Action Program. In a widely quoted interview, while discussing why the state should ban sex toys but not high-grade weapons, Ireland stated: "There are moral ways and immoral ways to use a firearm ... There is no moral way to use one of these devices." The other crusader is Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who built his early political career deriding homosexuality as "deviant behavior" and "perversion," but has toned down his homophobic rhetoric after allegations surfaced of a gay affair. (I am not one who believes that politicians generally have an obligation to discuss their sexual orientation in public, but a man who had constructed his entire political career principally on arguing for compulsory sexual conformity, and who writes that "many homosexuals would mislead society into believing that three men, an armadillo and a houseplant create a functional family," has made his own private life fair game.) When Ireland and King began their legal crusade, several other states had similar prohibitions. However, a landmark ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008 overturned a Texas ban and likely invalidated a Mississippi statute as well. Similar laws have been struck down by courts in Kansas, Lousisiana and Colorado. A reasonable interpretation of other state statutes, including vague provisions in Virginia and Georgia, suggests that Alabama is now the only jurisdiction in the country where such toys are illegal.

Both the 5th Circuit and the Alabama Supreme Court rejected the claim that the sex ban either implicated a "fundamental right" under the 14th Amendment or failed a "rational basis" test for Constitutionality. Law Professor Eugene Volokh has suggested that the Supreme Court may not choose to hear the case, despite the split between the 5th and 11th Circuits, because the law may be viewed as "of comparatively minor practical importance and the sort of thing that some Justices might see as beneath the Court's dignity." To use the language of the late Justice Potter Stewart, it is merely "an uncommonly silly law" and not a threat to ordered liberty. However, many draconian laws may seem inconsequential until you are the one jailed or until your rights are denied. The reality is that so-called marital aids (personally, I prefer the term "marital substitutes") play an important role in the emotional lives of millions of Americans.

I cannot say whether more Alabama women own vibrators than own Bibles. If I were guessing, I would suspect that a majority derive more use out of the vibrators. Certainly more pleasure. Nor does there appear to be any remotely rational basis for keeping sex toys out of the hands of married adults, or single adults, or even children. Now that we are relatively confident that masturbation does not make little girls go blind, or cause palms to sprout hair, exposure to sex toys shouldn't harm them. On the list of items that I might not want children to be exposed to in stores--guns, matches, poisons, junk food--sex toys are way down the list. Of course, if you don't want your daughter to use a dildo, don't buy her one. Don't take her shopping. Lock her into a chastity belt and raise her inside a stone tower like a Medieval princess. It's a free country, after all. Alas, children are resourceful. The average nine-year-old in Alabama probably knows more about human sexuality that several members of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. More fifth graders can tell you what a vibrator does than can tell you what a Supreme Court justice does. Which is why a prohibition on widely-used (and relatively-intuitive) devices is about as irrational as legislation comes.

The brilliant and irreverent libertarian politician Loretta Nall spearheaded a campaign two years ago to mail sex toys to Attorney General Troy King. I'd like to make him a far better offer. MacArthur fellow Sarah Ruhl's brilliant new comedy, In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play), opens on Broadway in November. The work, which premiered in Berkeley last winter, focuses on the origins of the vibrator as a medical device and its use to bring long-frigid Victorian Era wives to orgasm. Families will come to the show. So will tourists. Even Alabamans. They will enjoy themselves. I'd be thrilled if Attorney General King came to the opening as my guest. Not a date, just two grown men enjoying a lively, tasteful play about vibrators. We can even pick up a souvenir or two for Mrs. King, maybe something she can't buy in Alabama.

 

 

Comments

[jacksmith123]

this is unbelievable when people are dying couze' there's no clear laws to get stop rising up of the war business , the other hand exist a law to prohibit the sex toys
business what a crazy world that people being unconsciousness around them.

[Liberal Angel]

Why would people actually let their legislature get away with this? You can buy something to massacre people sitting in church, or kill cops and doctors, but you can't buy a pocket rocket? What sense in any part of reality does that make?

[MerhabaAbi]

It makes sense in the part of reality where sex is bad. I don't know who came up with that one but it's got a pretty big folowing.

[singermuse]

This is yet another fruit of the fundie backlash. I guess they don't want women in Alabama to be happy. But perversely, it makes sense. When people are plagued by anxiety and dissatisfaction, they turn to religion and buy more junk to fill the emptiness. Unfortunately sex toys will not be on a typical Alabaman's shopping list. Repealing this law would do so much to lift the spirits of so many women (and their tired spouses).

[COPerez]

That would explain a lot about the women I met while stationed in Alabama.

[wadenelson1]

I grew up in Alabama. K-12.

From the age of self-awareness on, say, 5th grade, I became increasingly convinced a spaceship had crashed and I'd somehow gotten left behind.

As the years went by I felt more and more isolated. I was not "like" them.

Eventually I moved out to California. Everything there was NOT about Roll Tide football, or guns. Pickup trucks. Or bragging about how drunk you got last night and then threw up.

I felt like ET. Overjoyed. Rescued! Suddenly I was back among my own people again. Intelligent people who had conversations, and real lives. Who didn't judge people based on skin color, or students on athletic ability alone. Intelligence actually counted for something!

I read stories like this and shake my head.

[shades]

Way to keep the "govmint" out of your private life, Alabama. Oh wait, that's only when the democrats are trying to pass something.

[moonflowerjewelry]

Hmmm... let me get this right... War - Good. Orgasm - Bad.
Why is it that the most vocally hateful homophobes are always the ones getting a little nooky in the men's bathroom?

[Liberal Angel]

Self hatred.

[oldgeek1]

If Alabama is interested in going after sex toys they should start with gun's.

[dressey]

Wow ! This is remarkable ! In 2009 there is a place on the planet that bans sex toys. I am sure the majority of Americans are completely embarassed to even hear of such a law down SOuth ( at least I hope they would be ). What is it about the Bible punching South that leads to such craziness. As an overseas observer I find it extremely difficult to even comprehend why the American public would even allow their local government to legislate about what goes on in the bed-room or play pen for that matter. Could someone please explain the psyche that would even allow someone to think that this is somehow warranted ?

[billstewart]

Alabama's hardly the only state that bans them - I've also heard Texas does, and there are probably others. What's surprising, though is that they did it as recently as 1998, as opposed to having the laws left over from the Victorian era.

[fedupinfla]

Guess me & Mr. Rabbit aren't welcome in 'Bama...

[dadw5boys]

Anyone notice the did not outlaw ROLLING PAPERS !!!!!

[GodBlessJohnWayne]

Here's an apparently radical idea: work through the state legislature to overturn an unpopular ban! (Radical, I suppose, because it advocates enacting change in an explicitly Constituti­onally-san­ctioned fashion.)

[Catothemuchyounger]

X 2. The law is idiotic. It is also Constitutional. The legislature should repeal it.

[Matt Osborne - Huffpost Blogger]

Our legislature meets for 30 days a year and spends all of them arguing about the education budget. There's no home rule here, either, which means an inordinate amount of time gets wasted on various municipalities' proposed ordinances. The only way to get a bill passed down there is to thump a Bible or grease the skids.

Thank you, Jim Crow state constitution!

[Catothemuchyounger]

That stinks, but it is no reason for the U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision binding on the whole country, to throw out a stupid but constitutional law.

Mind you, I am not saying the Court could not cook up an extension of the "right to privacy" to cover this, but none of the existing cases get you there, and that kind of extension should be discouraged, IMO.