back to article Alabama judges take hard line on dildos

An Alabama "adult themed chain store" has lost an appeal in which it sought to challenge the state's anti-obscenity law - prohibiting the sale of sex toys - as "unconstitutional" and "unconstitutionally vague". Alabama Supreme Court justices ruled on Friday that said law is indeed constitutional, and that Hoover-based Love …

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  1. Matthew Ellen

    not obscene

    Quote: The justices noted: "As the 11th Circuit pithily and somewhat coarsely stated: 'There is nothing "private" or "consensual" about the advertising and sale of a dildo.'"

    Nor is there anything obscene about it. The court's playground morality is telling.

  2. Andy 97
    FAIL

    You gone taken a wrong turnin' there boy!

    Nice to see that Alabama is doing all it can to retain its hold on the 1850's

    Up next, weekly cross burning!

  3. Citizen Kaned
    WTF?

    but i bet....

    they are fine about rednecks buying guns... america eh? <sigh>

    on a side not i watched a film called jesus camp at the weekend. i now think even less of the USA lol

  4. adnim

    No doubt

    that religion has something to do with this law. We all know that masturbation and sex for any purpose other than to breed more religious bigots is immoral and and a mortal sin.

    I am going to hell, but at least I'm experiencing a life and having some fun during my time here.

    “We feel a person should have the ability to come in and purchase a sexual device with out having to have a reason.” Only the insane would buy a dildo for no reason.

    I say free cucumbers for all Alabamans

  5. Grease Monkey Silver badge
    WTF?

    Wow!

    So it's OK to openly a gun to anybody who wants one, but not a dildo?

    Words, for one, fail me.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    On the other hand

    You can legally buy and own semi automatic Assault Rifles in the US.

    So not all bad eh?

    If we had that here how long do you think Gatso's would last?

    How long would Gordon Brown remain unshot?

    How long would the Council tax bully boys impose daft fines for wheely bin crimes?

    Much to be said IMO for a heavily armed population.

    Giving up easy access to placcy dicks seems worth it to me.

    Down with fake dicks UP with AK47's YAAAY!!!!

  7. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    Ah, Alabama

    The state where 41% of the population voted to keep miscegenation illegal ... in 2000.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A rose by any other name

    So don't call them dildoes. Instead have imitation carrots or novelty vibrating bananas. As soon as they complain that carrots don't look like that then dig up some old "That's Life" footage.

    In protest they could have a fresh vegetable section with an array of Gods' natural produce that just happen to be shaped rather similar to mens' appendages.

  9. lIsRT
    WTF?

    Obscenity.

    Quick question: why is obscenity bad anyway?

  10. kain preacher

    @AC 10:40 GMT

    "You can legally buy and own semi automatic Assault Rifles in the US"

    Really? You mean I can buy and assault weapon in California ? Oh Wait I can't. Look up gun control laws for each of the 50 states. Folks that are not from American tend to think that there is just national laws (Federal law). There are to separate Legal Systems in the US. You can be tried for crimes at the state level and for some crimes at the federal level.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    "might as well be living in a communist country"

    No, you short sighted buffoon; you might as well be living where you actually are, in a deeply religious redneck state ruled by ignorant and repressive Christian bigots. It's not communism that inspired this repressive judgment, and it's not being promoted by liberals; it's the religious right who are doing this.

    So frankly the best thing to say is that you " ... might as well be living in Alabama".

  12. MinionZero
    WTF?

    D'oh!

    Its fascinating how their twisted morality makes them so up tight are about sex, yet they will happily allow hundreds of millions to own guns resulting in thousands dying each year in shootings!. Added to this so many of them often fail to understand irony and many of them don't believe in Darwin's work.

    Ironically perhaps Darwinian natural selection is trying to tell the morons something?!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Good vibrations

    Help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda!!

  14. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Relig-o-tards and gun-nuts....

    Strike again.

    Guns = God's work = very good

    Sex aids = Satan's work = very bad

    Ho ho, Americans, eh?

    Who'd a thunk it?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Educational criteria?

    '...staff must must "ID everyone who enters and refuse sale to anyone who doesn’t fit the medical or educational criteria".'

    So what "educational criteria" do you need in order to buy a dildo?

    A Degree in Erotica?

    A school leaver certificate?

    A PhD in FUD?

    Isn't it just as well that you don't need any educational qualifications to buy a handgun and stick that in your nethers? (should you feel that way inclined)

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You must be my two new FNGs. Where you boys from?

    Alabama sir!

    You twins?

    It's great watching yet another religiously indoctrinated (male) judge, ensure that women aren't allowed to have good orgasms, without their men present.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Suprised?

    This is the heart of the bible-belt and the wonderful part of the country that approved of men dressed like helloween ghosts placing burning crosses in other's front gardens!

    Rosa Parks and Dr King obviously died for nothing as the law makers of the southern states are still living in the 19th Century!

    "Ma grand-mammy and mammy never had no sexu-all discourse all they lives and I ain't starting now!"

  18. Jimmy Floyd
    Big Brother

    @AC 11:24

    There was a very good piece in the Economist (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14258768) a few weeks ago on the paranoid style of American politics. You see it at the moment with that excuse for a 'debate' on health-care at the moment but the original piece was an essay written in the 60s.

    One might almost say that getting people paranoid was a deliberate conspiracy... :-)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Is it only me?

    "ID everyone who enters and refuse sale to anyone who doesn’t fit the medical or educational criteria"

    Is it only in my mind's eye that the following occurs?

    "Ok madam, I can see that you are over 21, now if you could just prove your inability to reach orgasm without one of these aids, I'll be glad to sell you one. "

    What's that, it IS only me? Oh, right, sorry...

    Mine's the one with the ID card and the oddly shaped bulge in the pockets.

  20. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Joke

    It's Alabama...

    Where the state motto is "At least we're not Mississippi"...

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    "Transcribed ... in some haste"

    Nope, that dialogue sounds accurate enough: I'd be surprised if those aren't word-for-word transcriptions. (After all, we've had presidents less coherent than that.)

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Beware Loaded Dildo

    If you could shoot somebody with a Dildo they would be legal and generally available or maybe they could say Dildo's are for self defense against marauding perverts. Could a Dildo be the ultimate Conceal Carry weapon - very concealed :-)

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    kain preacher - It's Alabama dude

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_(by_state)#Alabama

    If I'd meant Kalifornia I'd have written Kalifornia

    So AK47's are A OK in Alabama boy!

    Yaaaayyy!!!!

  24. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Improvise...

    ...with electric toothbrushes.

    (I wonder if the law bans import from out of state?)

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    RE: Relig-o-tards and gun-nuts

    It's not all the Americans, just the republicans. I have yet to meet a southern republican who isn't in some way a religious nut.

    On the other hand I'm starting to think about buying a gun to defend myself against the south...Oh wait... didn't we do that already?

  26. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Re: Ah, Alabama

    "The state where 41% of the population voted to keep miscegenation illegal ... in 2000"

    I'll 'fess up an say I'd no idea what "miscegenation" even existed as a word let alone knew what it meant until I read this and had to go look it up.

    But... WTF? In 2000? Really? Frightening...

    Clam

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Ian Johnston

    The miscegenation law in Alabama was repealed on 12 June 1967.

    Not 2000.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Cock-shaped guns?

    So could you get round the law by selling a cock-shaped gun? Or perhaps a gun with a suspiciously phallic rubberised sight on it?

    Obviously you'd have to be very careful in the bedroom, and you'd probably have to take care which one you took out with your mates on a hunting trip, but still I think there's a product opportunity there.

    Thumbs-up icon, because that'll have to do until the law changes.

  29. peyton?

    @kain preacher

    shhh! You're interrupting the Daily Hate.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    @ On the other hand

    "Down with fake dicks UP with AK47's YAAAY!!!!"

    Under the law that outlaws dildos, you are hereby declared illegal.

  31. Tam Lin

    The bible says girls should have sex with their fathers

    And so, presumably, does Alabama's judiciary. And really, what Alabama father wants his daughter ruined by these ungodly, oversized dildos?

    So sayeth Genesis 19:30-36 (and therefore applies to all licensees, co-marketers and affiliates of the Hebrew bible, including the USA).

  32. Martin 6 Silver badge

    @Ah, Alabama

    >The state where 41% of the population voted to keep miscegenation illegal

    And the other 59% agreed with it but couldn't read the long word.

  33. James Pickett

    Land of the free

    No surprise, really, from a country that has just declined to distribute the film 'Creation' about Charles Darwin. Perhaps they should show 'Elmer Gantry' a bit more often...

  34. John Wilson
    FAIL

    @Annonymous Coward

    Nope 2000:

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/al/main03.htm

    It was unenforceable as of 1967, but still there.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Religious right?

    The state has been solid blue since 1900... ok so back them dixie democrats were somewhat more racist than today, but the democrats have owned the state legislature permanently even though the state sends republicans to congress these days. These modern democrats are no in any way "religious right". But lets not let that get in the way of a good bit of religion bashing... tuth be told this was a combination of different sorts of people who like to tell everyone else what to do. You get as many of those on the left as you do on the right and religion actually has very little to do with the attitude. Rather, they use the prevailing doctrine to justify their own self-absorbed obsession with dictating the minutiae of people's private lives. In the past that would have been religion, now it's the belief in the greater good of society. They've dropped god from the equation and gone for the direct sell, setting themselves up as the lords and rulers who can tell the plebian masses how to live their lives.

  36. Matt 32

    Really?

    >Nor is there anything obscene about it. The court's playground morality is telling.

    >and it's not being promoted by liberals; it's the religious right who are doing this.

    And now folks, explain to me why the EU can ban conventional incandescent lightbulbs but the State of Alabama can't ban dildos? Yes, the right has some wing nut ideas. And the left is just as glad to use Government to impose it's belief system as well.

    The issue here isn't obscenity, it's whether the State can regulate what is being sold. It can. The courts do (should) not make the law; this court was simply saying no matter how ridiculous it is the State of Alabama has a right to prohibit their sale.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Religions and forbidding sex

    "that religion has something to do with this law. We all know that masturbation and sex for any purpose other than to breed more religious bigots is immoral and and a mortal sin."

    I have wondered why many religions try and stop people having sex (especially the unmarried), or simply enjoying sex. The conclusion I have come to is that if people will obey rules like that, then they will obey all sorts of other rules, and won't question things like why they need to be donating money to their local church/mosque/..... .

    It's strange how god is so bad with money that it's constantly broke, so needs handouts to survive. Tax free is a good scam too.

    If you think about it too, policies and schemes that are successful within an organised religion will stick about, and the ones that aren't successful will die out. Evolutionary theory can be applied to religion itself!

  38. James Micallef Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Simple solution

    Sell them as decorative ornaments, artistic objects or whatever.

  39. James O'Brien
    Joke

    No one has said this yet?

    So when are they going to take the shaft?

  40. Daniel Owen

    Where?

    You can buy a gun, but not if you are going to use it to pleasure your wife with!! Oh no sir, it's for shooting her only!!!

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    But now that dildo's are illegal

    I bet even in Alabama you can buy off the shelf cucumbers without a license. Or a doctors receipt. What is a good medical purpose for a dildo anyway?

    I bet Paris knows

  42. Matthew Ellen

    @Matt32

    You're right, states are allowed to make stupid laws.

    The way the court enforced the law was to say that the advert of the dildo is immoral. It clearly isn't. It is the court who made a call on how to interpret a law about obscenity. Clearly they haven't grown up out of their playground mentality with regards to sex.

  43. kain preacher

    AC:12:52 GMT

    If you meant Alabama you should of said Alabama not US. US reefers to all 50 states plus its territory. Like the difference bet wen England and Britain .

  44. Dive Fox

    Personally

    I just buy mine from out of state.

    Remember - Alabama is home of Redstone Arsenal, where the US developed all those nifty rockets. I still think Huntsville should secede from Alabama though.

    And yes, Alabama has very liberal gun laws. Waiting period my ass; they just installed an express lane.

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE:The bible says girls should have sex with their fathers

    Did you even read the passage you refer to? The one about a couple of gals not having any men around and so raping their father?

    Somehow I don't think most could possibly interpret this as advocation of incest.

  46. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Stop

    Re: But now that dildo's are illegal

    I can't see any indication here that posession or use of a dildo is illegal. They're just saying that the state has a right to pass a law making it illegal to *sell* them. That still leaves several possibilities:

    You could buy one on the internet and have it posted to you.

    You could already own one, from before it was illegal to buy them.

    You could be given one by a friend or relative. (!)

    You could make your own.

    Suitably enraged lawmakers may be able to ban these possibilities, too, but there's nothing in the article that says they have, yet.

  47. Luther Blissett

    @MinionZero

    > Ironically perhaps Darwinian natural selection is trying to tell the morons something?!

    Ironically, so you say that dildos are essential to the next step of human evolution?

    More or less ironically still, there has been a religion of dildos for 3000 years, continuing to the present day, with the fetish of erecting large vertical pointy objects on the Earth which penetrate the Sky.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    oh well

    at least they have mail order.

  49. Tristan Young
    WTF?

    Alabama judges take hard line on dildos

    I guess the justice from Alabama was too intimidated by the larger size of rubber wangs.

    Hey dude, this is the 21st Century. There's no room for your kind of old-timer backwards stupidity.

    I guess Alabama folk will have to continue using cukes, carrots and bed posts, or opt for contraband commandos with flexible shafts and flashing lights that play "Raindrops keep falling on my head" while pulsating her to pleasure..

    Glad I'm not American.

  50. David 45

    Draconian stuff

    I believe they may be also bringing back burning at the stake and hanging, drawing and quartering. Oh, and make it public again. Might bring in a few dollars/pounds for governments if they sell tickets.

  51. Burch

    Typical

    of the nanny state.

  52. Rexx

    Center of Enlightenment

    Ahhhhhhh Alabama........ Neck and neck with Mississippi in the race for Human Enlightenment

  53. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Puritan

    If you draw a box in the middle of the US, keeping States that border the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on the outside, everything inside is like traveling through a time machine.

    Well that's not strictly true, a few of those middle country states are actually in the present, but the majority still live in some sort of puritan, Victorian era. Most of the modern US call them Flat Earthers, they're the ones that think affordable health care is evil and the Confederate flag is simply a symbol of southern States legislative freedom (yeah right and the Swastika is a harmless good luck charm). Their heroes are the obscenely rich and it truely is ironic that people as poor as this will march screaming and shouting obscenities in order to protect the Michael Savages and Rush Limbaughs of the world from having to pay their fair share in taxes. These are the people who lost their jobs to Asian slave labour, and yet they are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent the CEOs that stole their pensions and forced them into foreclosure operate in a fair and socially responsible manner.

    Their fanatical religious leaders and radio snake oil salesmen are continually caught getting high on prescription pain pills, paying for gay prostitutes, their exalted right wing politicians are continually getting caught breaking election finance laws, being bribed by lobbyists or engaging in gay text sex with teenage congressional volunteers - and yet they're quite content with the hypocritical and flat earth laws that interfere with the sex lives of their neighbours.

    It truly is astonishing how stupid these people are, but then you have to remember that the only fair comparisons are with the working class serfs and peasant that lived in the Middle Ages, allowing corrupt Church leaders to use invented fantasies about a paradise called heaven (for those that do as they're told) and unending torture in hell (for those that say "hang on a minute, you want what?") to scare the local population into working for nothing for land owners and the Church itself.

  54. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE:The bible says girls should have sex with their fathers #

    @AC 16:27 GMT."The one about a couple of gals not having any men around and so raping their father?"

    You actually believe that? Lot disappeared into the mountains with his teen daughters. They allegedly got him drunk and had sleep-sex with him and each became impregnated after a single ride on his lovestick. Well I know that being maggotted unconscious sure improves my erectile performance!

    Quick question: they escaped from the town of Sodom as it was being destroyed. How'd they manage to carry a dozen bottles of bubbly?

    I reckon Lot prodded his teen daughters, knocked them up, came down from the mountain and had to make something up. In a patriarchal society, why would the girls say any different? Or the Genesis writers write any different?

  55. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Taliban country

    If the Talibs get booted out of Afghanistan, Alabama would seem the logical place for them to head for.

    Sweet home Alabama? I think not.

  56. Daniel 4

    @ AC 17:37

    More than that, the few middle states that aren't "fat earthers" are usually so because of high population cities. I'm currently living in Saint Louis, which isn't too bad, even if it still has a lot more of the flat earthers around than I would like. However, stray out into the Ozarks, and things are a different story altogether. Of course, Missouri is just the opposite of Illinois - in Illinois, Chicagoland dwarfs the rest of the state in population, and there are a few semi-enlightened smaller metros midstate as well. In Missouri, the rural population is larger than the metro. So the state laws have a definite flat earther feel, even if it's not as bad as *shudder* Alabama.

    -d

  57. deegee

    Religion: Yes; but ancient scriptures: No

    @adnim 10:26 - No doubt

    "that religion has something to do with this law"

    @AC 15:19 - Religions and forbidding sex

    "I have wondered why many religions try and stop people having sex"

    Anyone who actually cares to research this in the original scriptures (ancient language required), or by using common-sense and removing the sod in the current common "bibles", will find that it actually says in many passages that sex between husband and wife is a good thing that is to be done as often as possible.

    The "control" over sex goes back to the early religious leaders enforcing control over their subjects. The common "religion" concepts of sin, hell, eternal suffering, are all man-made fear controls and are not part of the original writings or are not in the same context as how they are used today.

    Studying the ancient writings and languages for thirty years provides a stark contrast to common religious notions.

  58. Steve Roper
    Go

    Re: Puritan (AC 14th Sep 17:37)

    The central US region you are referring to is generally, and aptly, known as Dumbfuckistan. It is interesting that these same time-trapped states were also the ones instrumental in re-electing Bush. Bear in mind that this region does in fact encompass some of the Atlantic coastal states, such as N/S Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and excludes some of the Great Lakes states like Wisconsin and Illinois. But other than this, it appears that there are many people who agree with you:

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v41/CaithSith/Dumbfuckistan.jpg

    (image google "Dumbfuckistan" and see just how many variations of this map there are!)

  59. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Taliban? Bring 'em on...

    Re: AC 2009 20:29

    Send all the Taliban here you want, it's legal to own .50 caliber (12.5mm) sniper rifles here. No need for those wimpy AK-47s. Precision deliver 'r us, as it were. (Credit where it's due, though--the record for a long shot sniper with a .50 is held by a British soldier, over 2000 meters.)

    Besides, Redstone Arsenal can always use more test targets for the nifty gadgets they're developing out there.

    netgeek

  60. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    War is wasted in Afghanistan.

    The rise of the Talabama... the war on terror goes on. I pissed myself laughing when I read this. Thanks Reg for bringing this repressive regime out into the open. Maybe Obama should take military action to bring down the sexually repressed tyrants!

  61. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @Deegee

    "The common "religion" concepts of sin, hell, eternal suffering, are all man-made fear controls and are not part of the original writings or are not in the same context as how they are used today."

    Man made... as opposed to what?

  62. Trokair 1
    Flame

    Generalizations make everyone feel better

    This state is obviously representative of all state law.

    And all Americans are religious idiots.

    And all Americans own guns.

    And all British people are missing 50% of their teeth.

    And all British people have ears the size of single prop plane wings.

    And they are all too busy eating biscuits and drinking tea or too stupid to notice their country erroding out from underneath of them.

  63. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Hahaha

    What a bunch of losers, have to hand it to the nation founded by puritans...

  64. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    The Dukes of Huntsville

    My wife to be lives in Huntsvillie which is in North Alamaba. Next year when we get married we will be painting our car red, putting a duxie flag on top and then going an a dildo run across the border followed by Boss Hog.

    Sounds like fun huh?

  65. SSC dougal
    Coat

    @ Anonymous coward Posted Monday 14th September 2009 15:43 GMT

    "I bet even in Alabama you can buy off the shelf cucumbers without a license. Or a doctors receipt. What is a good medical purpose for a dildo anyway?"

    The medical purpose for a dildo is for treatment of hysteria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria

    mines the one with the huge dildo and 19th century medical dictionary

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