Texas scraps ban on sex toys
A US appeals court has overturned a ban on the sale of sex toys in Texas.
The state was one of the last in the US South to keep the ban - punishable by as many as two years in jail.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
Companies which sell the toys sued in 2004 over the constitutionality of the law.
They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the suit and said the Constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such devices.
“The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex.
"It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct.
"This is an insufficient justification after Lawrence,” the appeals judges wrote, referring to a past case.
The Texas attorney general’s office, which represented the Travis County district attorney in the case, has not decided whether to appeal, said agency spokesman Tom Kelley.
Phil Harvey, president of Adam & Eve Inc., said the 5th Circuit Court’s decision was a big step forward.
He said: “I think it’s wonderful, but it does seem to me that since Texas was one of three states in the country - along with Mississippi and Alabama - that continued to outlaw the sale of sex toys and vibrators, that it was probably past time.”
