not again

Although Alabama is my home state and I'll always have a fondness for her southern soul, at times I am downright flabbergasted. I can put up with the popular media version of Alabama, mostly wrong, of the gap-toothed NASCAR rednecks in trailer parks, etc. I can tolerate the (possibly) worst commercial ever, the hijinx and the hoopla, but what I cannot tolerate is actual bona fide official stupidity. Boing Boing has drawn my attention to the recent 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision allowing a ban on the sale of sex toys in the case Sherri Williams v. Attorney General of Alabama (pdf). The court stated with approval that "Alabama's Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act prohibits, among other things, the commercial distribution of 'any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary value.'" Not that I'm a big user of sex toys or anything; what gets me is the pointlessly puritan nature of the law. After all, if people want to use sex toys, let 'em. How can their private use hurt society? What really gets me though is that the court upholds the law based on the fact that the state has the power to "restrict the sale of sex." How on earth does a ban on the sale of french ticklers restrict the sale of sex? Isn't sex an act, not a product? But the legal aspects aside, the law is just another obvious attempt to impose a strict moral code on the citizens using the state's police power, which never works. Ban prostitution and child porn, fine. But it's backwards to legislate the private, ultimately harmless decisions of normal everyday folks just because they like to use vibrators. Sheesh. Meanwhile, Alabama lawmakers are against extending the assault weapons ban? Ah, good ol' moral hypocrisy, served up southern style.