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Dildos Now Legal in Texas

By Callagy

Permit yet another non-Boalt diversion from yet another non-Boalt student...

Just it time for Valentine's Day, the Fifth Circuit helps the public learn to help themselves. In this opinion, the Fifth Circuit strikes down Texas's "obscene-device statute" as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. Across the state you will soon hear a big sigh of... relief.

It's just not easy being a moralistic legislator in Texas. First Lawrence v. Texas. Now they can't even ban "a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs," as the statute reads. Until I saw this case, I had no idea the word "dildo" appeared in a statute anywhere.

And before we go, the money line: "Advertisements of the devices could be prohibited if they are obscene... [b]ut the State may not prohibit the promotion or sale of a bed, even one specially designed or marketed for sexual purposes, by merely defining it as obscene." Zing!

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).