MONTGOMERY, AL —Blogger and former Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Loretta Nall has organized a protest campaign to fight her state’s war on sex toys.“Sex Toys for Troy King” encourages the general public to send vibrators and the like to the state’s attorney general.
Lower courts found the law unconstitutional in 1999 and 2002, saying Alabama did not prove a legitimate interest in regulating the trade, but the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld the law on appeal in 2004, saying there was no constitutional right to sexual privacy.
The majority of justices did write that Alabama could repeal the law if residents decide “a prohibition on sex toys is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly.”
Another suit against the law was appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case earlier this year.
“It’s absolutely outrageous an attorney general would squander our tax dollars and barge into our bedrooms and tell us what we can and cannot do in Alabama,” Nall said to the local media. “We have real crime in Alabama.”
A Jefferson County judge declined to close a sex toys store in north Alabama’s Hoover earlier this month, saying the law’s vagueness on what constitutes “adults-only enterprises” means the city can’t close the shop.
Nall said she has personally mailed an inflatable pig to the attorney general’s office.
The state passed a law in 1998 banning the sale of sex toys, although possession of the items remains legal. The purchase of sex toys for “bona fide medical or other purposes” is only allowed.
For more of Nall’s perspective on this issue, visit her blog at NallForGovernor.Blogspot.com.
