Alabama Supreme Court saves Alabama from…..Dildos.
Looks like there’s a ‘circuit split’, given Lawrence v. Texas and some other cases I’m not familiar with, so chances are the US Supremes may step in and slap down the Professors of Virtue and Dildonics wasting the peoples’ time in Montgomery.
If this indeed happens, as the article points out, we’ll get the fun of listening to those clowns Scalia and Thomas likely having to say "dildo".
Sonia! Help bring dildos to Alabama!
Sonia! Help bring dildos to Alabama!
By Grace Chu
Yesterday, the Alabama Supreme Court took sixty-one pages to articulate why criminalizing the sale of dildos is sound public policy. Kids, if you’re convicted of selling dildos in Alabama, you could be looking at one year of hard labor, because the public must be protected from the dangers of blue silicone cocks. (But guns are okay.)
Here is the section of the Alabama code (ยง13A-12-200.2 (a)(1)) in question:
It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly distribute, possess with intent to distribute, or offer or agree to distribute any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary value. Material not otherwise obscene may be obscene under this section if the distribution of the material, the offer to do so, or the possession with the intent to do so is a commercial exploitation of erotica solely for the sake of prurient appeal. Any person who violates this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be punished by a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) and may also be imprisoned in the county jail or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than one year. A second or subsequent violation of this subdivision is a Class C felony if the second or subsequent violation occurs after a conviction has been obtained for a previous violation. Upon a second violation, a corporation or business entity shall be fined not less than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) nor more than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000).
I can already see the conversations in chain gangs around the State of ‘Bama.
Convict #1: So, what are you here for?
Convict #2: I pistol-whipped a lady and stole her purse. Turns out she only had seventy-five cents and a vibrator in it. What are you here for?
Convict #1: I sold her the vibrator.
Convict #2: Oh DA-A-A-MN! You are GANGSTA!
Will the fine dildo peddlers of Alabama attempt to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court, and if they do, will the Supreme Court entertain the notion of deciding whether Alabama, the lone state who insists on protecting their citizens from clit buzzers, should enter the 21st century or remain the laughingstock of the rest of the country?
You know what? The Supremes might actually hear the case.
See, once upon a time the State of Texas was known for its comical sex-related laws that took an army of lawyers and federal judges to strike down. In 2002, the Supreme Court struck down its law against man on man booty sex – and any other sort of intimate relations between two consenting adults in private – in Lawrence v. Texas, and last year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Reliable Consultants v. Earle told Texas to fuck off and the vibe-lovin’ folks in Texas (and by extension, Mississippi and Louisiana) to fuck on (and on and on!) by striking down Texas’ sex toy ban, and Texas gave up and decided not to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The Eleventh Circuit (consisting of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida) had already upheld Alabama’s sex toy ban in 2007 after hearing the case for a third time.
So now there is a conflict in the federal courts – known as a circuit split – about the constitutionality of sex toy bans, and when there is a circuit split, the Supreme Court is more likely to step in and clear things up.
Furthermore, the issue is not going to be heard and resolved anywhere else, because the southeast is the only place in the United States that gets its panties in a twist when it comes to adults buying plastic toys to stick in their hoo hoos in the privacy of their own homes, and both federal circuits in the southeast (the Fifth and the Eleventh) have already ruled on the propriety of selling vibrators. (See Federal Circuit map here. Figures, right?) The rest of the United States simply doesn’t give a shit. So, the Supreme Court is pretty much the only place left to settle the dispute.
Maybe Justice Sotomayor’s first task could be liberating the sexually frustrated in Alabama by convincing Justice Scalia that masturbation – even enhanced with vibrators – still won’t make you blind. Also, I just want to hear Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas say the word “dildo.”