It's been a nine-year fight, but the challengers to Alabama's law against selling personal pleasure devices lost a battle last week when the 11th Circuit ruled -- on Valentine's Day, no less -- that the law is Constitutional.
And while the proponents of the ban claim that they're not trying to dictate what adults do in private and in fact only want to protect the children, it's not that popular of a law among locals. One paper, the Decatur Daily, ran a poll in which 91 percent of respondents thought the ban is stupid.
In 2004, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Americans do not have a fundamental right to sexual privacy when it upheld the Alabama law.
At the moment, Alabamans can still buy gadgets designed to increase their pleasure, thus helping reinforce intimacy and relaxation and keeping otherwise good citizens from exploding. The law will not be enforced until the case has run its full course, and the plaintiffs can keep on fighting it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if need be. The question now is whether after all these years, they have the energy to keep fighting.
And if they don't, will Alabama residents notice or care? They will, if internet retailers decide not to risk shipping to the state and those sexy Southern women decide that they don't need the state officials telling them what they can and can't buy as part of a normal, healthy sex life.
