As most of us know, Alabama made headlines a few years back with the legal machinations related to its sex toy ban.
Here’s what I’d like to know, though: throughout the country, there are things that are illegal, and then there are things that are “illegal” .
For example, crack cocaine is illegal in Illinois. Get caught with even a gram and you’re looking at five years.
Marijuana is illegal in Illinois. Get caught with a “small amount” (less than 20 grams) in Sangamon County and the cops will confiscate it and fine you like $100.
Drug paraphernalia is “illegal” in Illinois. I can buy all the drug paraphernalia I want at at least three retail outlets in Springfield. I just have to be careful to dance around what it actually is when I’m at the [del]head shop[/del] novelties store, make sure it’s covered in the sack when I’m taking it home, etc.
So over in Alabama, how stiff are the penalties for being caught with dildos and such? Can you buy all you want at a store, provided you pretend that they’re for therapeutic purposes? Do sex shops even exist over there? Do they ban the importation of same from out of state on-line retailers? If you’re caught with a schlong in the car, are you looking at a long, hard prison sentence?
The law is called the Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act and the text is as follows:
As far as I can tell, nobody has ever been prosecuted for possessing sex toys; the litigation involving the act has solely been people filing pre-enforcement challenges.* Sex toys are still sold in Alabama, just under euphemistic product names (“novelties”, “massagers”, etc.)
*A number of people have been prosecuted for possessing pornography under subsection (1).
The company I work for sells sex-toys online (and does other stuff, too). To avoid liability, we maintain a list of places we will not ship them to. This is all done automatically, of course and orders are rejected as soon as the customer enters their address.
Eh, not even that euphemistic. Places like Pleasures exist rather openly and are termed “romance stores that sell sex toys”. I even know of one particular branch that has a drive-up window.
How do places like Fantasyland get their inventory is the companies that sell sex toys won’t ship to Alabama addresses? Do sex shop owners have to drive out of state to pick up their supplies? Or will the manufacturers ship to addresses they know are legit sex shops?
It depends on where they are, too. The accepted way to force some stores to close is to open a “church” nearby. One church group in Pell City Alabama even went after a recycling center, cost the owner lots of 6-figure$. Even after the recycler moved across town, the church bought the land across the street from him there and continued complaining about him. But then there’s an area in Birmingham that has a motel listing hourly room rates out by the road to attract more “romance businesses”.
I don’t know, I’ve never asked where they get their inventory. My wife has lots of sex toys that were all purchased in Alabama, so it’s obviously not enforced. A very quick search seems to indicate that Adam and Eve and Amazon will both ship sex toys to Alabama.
It’s funny because there’s an adult novelty store nearby that’s next-door to a Pentecostal church; the adult store was there first and they seem to be doing just fine. Then again it’s an “classy” one that markets to women & couples; unlike the near the local drive-in/flea market that proudly advertises “private viewing” booths.
It was too stupid to waste time on, but the chief complaints seemed to revolve around beer. Beer comes in aluminum cans, and drunks are the second best source of beer cans (after bars, which are often filled with drunks). So in the same line of thought that condoms causes sex to happen, beer cans cause alcohol consumption, presumeably by keeping the cans in circulation. It’s severely stupid around here. Literally no one wanted to see the beer cans, or anyone who would be bringing them in for crushing and storage (before trucking them out). At the current site, they settled for 8ft solid fencing and restricted hours and days of operation.
Let the Alabama bashing begin! Seriously, like I said, it’s not really an issue. The law isn’t enforced. I can leave my house right now and go buy all the sex toys and porn I want. Places like Fantasyland advertise on local radio. My wife has lots of sex toys and has gone to several of those lingerie/sex toy etc. parties at people’s houses. There are plenty of of things to be concerned about in Alabama, like any other state, but this isn’t one of them.
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