Adam & Eve can sell sex toys in Texas. Legally. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a federal court struck down a Texas law banning the sale of sex toys. The court said the state was trying to legislate morality, invade the privacy of playful Texans in search of relief and violating the Constitution. What the court actually said was, "What ever one might think or believe about the use of these devices, government interference with their personal use and private use violates the Constitution" I like that phrase "think or believe" with which the ruling takes in the thoughtful and the faithful, the Unitarians and the Baptists, (or as a friend said, "the rational and the irrational") all at once. Adam & Eve (a distributor of sex toys) and a couple of sex toy stores in Austin sued to get the law overturned on appeal after it was originally tossed out of court by a judge who said the Constitution did not guarantee the right to promote naughty stuff. The appeals court disagreed.
So what did the court overturn? From the actual Texas law governing "three-dimensional" stuff (they have a different law for "flat" stuff and set that out in the law): "'Obscene device' means a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." Imagine a lonely Texas puritan in a cowboy hat, some damp-palmed member of the legislature, in a dimly lit room with his pen and his heated imagination, sweating over fitting the words "dildo" and "artificial vagina" and "genital organs" (feeling the thrill that only a puritan can feel at writing words like that) into the same sentence. I am sure he wrote the words over and over, like a naughty boy at a blackboard, until he got things just right. At any rate, the appeals court just erased it all (even the tingle words).
Not that the law wasn't ever enforced. A few years back, a woman named Joanne Webb was arrested for having a party (a Tupperware sort of party, only she called it a "Passion Party") in Burleson, Texas (self-appointed "City of Character" and hometown of American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson), where she allegedly peddled various pokers, prodders, ticklers, vibrators and assorted feel-good items to the suburban gals up there near Ft. Worth. But somebody didn't like Joanne or maybe didn't really like for suburban gals to feel that good and turned her in (Joann was already crossways with the daughter of a big shot local evangelical minister, but police claim whoever phoned in the tip remains anonymous, despite caller ID). A female undercover cop was dispatched and promptly purchased couple of vibrators that looked like penises and were obviously built to stimulate sexual organs (in open violation of Texas law against those very things). Joanne was busted and ended up on national tv. Eventually, after lots of hoopla, the charges were dropped. Nowadays Joanne could get back to doing her part for the economy without fear of arrest if it weren't for the fact that she and her husband were financially, emotionally and just about every other way possible destroyed by the whole thing (just as any anonymous, self-righteous, puritan would have wanted it).
I hope Joanne at least feels proud about the law that ruined her being overturned. I know I do. I am not really a Texan but I live in Texas and I must admit I felt a little tug pride when I found out real Texans and fake Texans alike now could fearlessly buy and sell sex toys -- for the simple reason that it made Texas appear more enlightened than Louisiana, Mississippi (which does not take a whole lot of enlightenment) and, somewhat strangely, Virginia (which is normally so far above Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas that it is hard to believe they all once belonged to the same Confederacy). Joanne could still be arrested in any of those states for having what she called a "Passion Party," but not here.
I am sure there were lots of private celebrations and maybe a bit of celebratory shopping (there are lots of Republicans in Texas and Republicans see shopping as a patriotic act, no matter what they are shopping for; even President Bush, who says he is from Texas, has said Americans should express their patriotism and defiance by shopping, first in the face of 9/11 and more recently in the face of a troubled economy ). And there are so many stimulating and puzzling things for the newly liberated Texas shopper to choose from, things most of them would be incapable of thinking up even in their naughtiest fantasies, and so many companies on the Internet to choose from.
And perhaps the most appropriate response. The Blowfish Company (or The Blowfishies as they prefer to call themselves), one of the biggest purveyors of things sexual and erotic, decided to have a sale in honor of the newly sex-toy enlightened Lonestar State. Under the headline "Don't Mess with Texas: A Big Toy Review," and after slyly indicating that the sex toy ban didn't hurt its Texas mail-order business any ("the law was more honored in the breach than in the observance here at Blowfish"). "In celebration, and in honor of Texas as the state where everything is bigger, we'd like to take a quick tour through some of our largest toys." The tour begins with The Hammer of Insatiability and moves on to Titan and Bigboi. It seems the most fitting (or unfitting, but painful either way) of celebrations.
Texas is now sex-toy enlightened, but it remains right down there with Mississippi and Louisiana in lots of other ways. A woman named Raije Rian, 41, recently was given 23 years for sexually assaulting a teen-ager in Williamson County, even after the boy's mother said there was no assaulting going on -- it was oral sex and comedian George Carlin said such boys are not victims, they they are "lucky" -- and that her 16-year-old son made a "big boy" decision and faces "big boy" consequences. And the consequences? The boy's mother is not going to let him get his driver's license and she is not going to let him out of her sight. Meanwhile Rian will spend at least 13 years in jail and has permanently lost custody of her two children, who will be put up for adoption. The former Williamson County attorney once told me, "Williamson County justice is just." He said it with a straight face. Puritans are like that.
Somebody should hit Texans like that upside the head with a Hammer of Insatiability. Here's where you can buy one. Legally.