A state representative from Central Texas has pre-filed a bill that would prevent the sale of self-pleasure toys in stores that are not explicitly sex shops. If passed, the bill would mean the days of adding dildos to your curbside Target order, and sheepishly hoping the delivery man doesn’t look inside the bag as he graciously sets it in the backseat, are gone. This sucks. Or blows. Certainly doesn’t vibrate.
Rep. Hillary Hickland, a Republican from Belton, filed the House Bill 1549, with the same purported motivation as many of the other anti-sex (anti-fun?) bills that some conservatives have tried to pass in recent times — protecting children.
“Children have the right to grow up free from premature exposure to explicit materials, and as lawmakers, it’s our responsibility to uphold that right,” Hickland wrote in an email.
Hickland enters this legislative session as a freshman representing District 155. She’s pre-filed 15 bills relating to issues ranging from healthcare estimates to school district funding. Hickland isn’t just targeting adult fun in this session. She wants to make breaking curfews, as a minor, a criminal offense.
It’s good to see she’s tackling the important issues, says Sen. Nathan Johnson.
“This is such a grotesque display of misplaced priorities that it is disheartening,” Johnson said. “I hope we get over this stuff real fast because the voters, including Republican primary voters, Democratic primary voters, every voter, really need us to perform our job.”
But Haven't Sex Toys Been Banned Already?
The sale of sex toys has indeed been banned in Texas since 1973. Crazy to think it happened in the same era that brought us Debbie Does Dallas. Section 43.21 of the Texas Penal Code prohibits the sale or promotion of “obscene devices,” defined as “a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” The law also states that ownership of six or more devices indicates the intent to promote.The law has rarely been enforced, but rarely does not mean never. In 2004, Joanne Webb of Burleson was charged with obscenity after selling two sex toys to a couple of narcs — literally two narcotics officers posing as a couple.
Webb sold vibrators for a now-defunct multilevel marketing company, Passion Parties. The company catered to women who were too abashed to go to the local XXX store. Obviously, buying sex toys from an acquaintance, in front of all your other acquaintances, is better than getting caught red-handed in the latex aisle. The charges were ultimately dismissed, but she had faced up to a year in prison and a $4,000 fine. The case stirred a media circus and pushed her family into financial peril.
“Unable to pay their bills, the Webbs closed the office, called creditors and started selling everything they could,” wrote Glenna Whitley in a 2004 profile of the Webbs for the Observer. “Joanne called Passion Parties headquarters and asked for help with [lawyer’s fees]. No one in the company's history had been arrested for selling vibrators.”
After all was said and done, Webb went back to selling vibrators in other counties. Four years later, when a shop owner was charged after selling a “Lick It Lover” to an undercover cop, a U.S. district judge declared the obscenity law “facially unconstitutional and unenforceable throughout the State of Texas.” Since then, no one has been arrested for selling battery-operated joy. Alabama and Mississippi have similar statutes but they are equally ignored. Like the unenforceable nature of a ban on selling sex toys, a ban on non-sex shops selling toys is typically seen as moot.
The bill proposes a $5,000 fine for stores that violate the rules, but the sex industry can be highly lucrative for some sectors. In 2021, the global market for sex toys was valued at $34.95 billion, according to a report by Spherical Insights & Consulting, so it’s no wonder grocery stores and drugstores would want a piece of the action. Retailers like CVS, Walgreens and Target have been selling sex toys online for decades, but in-store options are a newer trend. Walmart, the largest grocery retailer in the world, was late getting in on the fun when it started stocking shelves with “personal massagers” in 2018. Now the company sells an assortment of rings, strokers and plugs.
“If you were to ban sex toys from convenience stores or pharmacies or whatever, are we going to have a new underground sting operation to try to bust everybody?” Johnson asked. “Cops are overextended as it is. This is silly. If you want to be serious, let's be serious about something more serious.”
