Sex Hysteria reader and fellow blogger Maggie McNeil sent me a link to a HuffPo story about Sherri Williams who has opened the world’s first drive-thru sex shop romance store. I have written about this before, but it’s clear that the newly opened store in the Pleasures chain is acquiring high profile world wide attention with the story now being carried not just in the U.S. news outlets, but also around the world in places like the UK, Thailand, and One India. It’s nice to see news from Alabama besides the latest prosecution of a high level state official.
The real story is, of course, that the sale of sex toys is illegal in Alabama and Ms. Williams fought a long hard fight with the help of the Alabama ACLU to try and get the law overturned. The Alabama state government has a long history of injecting itself into people’s private sexual affairs, mindlessly conflating art with pornography, and generally embarrassing itself on a national scale by seemingly never having progressed past the middle ages.
As for the law:
…the law has a loophole that allows for the sale of sex toys that are needed for unspecified “medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial, or law enforcement” purposes, and Williams jumped through it. Customers buying toys – items that can be used for sexual stimulation – fill out an anonymous form with 10 questions including whether they or a partner have difficulty with sexual fulfillment.
Anyone more than a few decades old, will remember the days when adult magazines and movies were sold in the U.S. with disclaimers claiming that they were for “educational purposes only” in order to thwart the puritanical anti-porn cops. The Alabama legislature clearly misses those good ol’ days. When it comes to iron-fisted sexual repression and the enthusiastic practice of hypocrisy, there is no place quite like Alabamastan.
I wonder what a “law enforcement” reason for the purchase of sex toys would look like? A vibrating billy club, perhaps? Or maybe a really big dildo used as a means of interrogation?
Yikes. That would have to be right up there with water boarding.