US conservatives want to outlaw sex toys in South Carolina

[NG]

Bill would make sale of sex toys illegal in South Carolina
SEANNA ADCOX
Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Sugar 'N Spice manager Pat Irons says a proposal to outlaw the sale of sex toys in South Carolina is outrageous.

But banning the sale of sex toys is actually quite common in some Southern states.

The South Carolina bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Ralph Davenport, would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses.

The measure would add sex toys to the state's obscenity laws, which already prohibit the dissemination and advertisement of obscene materials.

People convicted under obscenity laws face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
South Carolina law borrows from a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to define obscene as something "contemporary community standards" determine as "patently offensive" sexual conduct, which "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

While Davenport's proposal is probably aimed at shutting down X-rated adult bookstores, Irons said, it hurts customers of "couples-oriented" stores such as her West Columbia shop, which sells everything from lingerie to bridal shower novelties to lotions.

At Sugar 'N Spice, sex toys are displayed in a separate room. Buyers include men and women who "need a little help" because surgery or medical problems are affecting their marriage, Irons said.

"We've been selling these sex toys for 27 years," she said Friday. "Even pastors shop in here. They send couples in here they counsel for marriage problems. It's probably going to hit people like that harder than people realize."

Davenport, who is from Spartanburg County, did not return several messages Friday to talk about his bill, which was introduced last month. No other legislator has signed on as a co-sponsor and its passage this year seems unlikely.

Recent police raids in Davenport's county have targeted adult-oriented businesses.

The sheriff's office there seized movies, sex toys, sexual-enhancement pills and surveillance tapes from two businesses in January.

One of the stores, Priscilla's, sued the sheriff's office, claiming the raid violated constitutional rights and asked for the return of the seized items. Sheriff Chuck Wright refused.

The case has not yet gone to trial, Maj. Dan Johnson said.

Johnson said he knew nothing of Davenport's proposal and was unsure how it could help their investigations, which involve undercover detectives renting movies or buying magazines and prosecutors determining whether they're obscene.

"We're focused on the hard-core magazines, videos ... the hard-core porn," he said.

Other states that ban the sell of sex toys include Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas, said Mark Lopez, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Alabama's law banning the sale of sex toys has been circulating through the courts since its passage in 1998. U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Jr. twice ruled against the law, holding that it violated the constitutional right to privacy, but the state won both times on appeal.

In February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which is back in the lower courts.

"People think it's distasteful. It makes for good campaign fodder and panders to the conservative side of people. That's why we see the laws in the South," Lopez said.

The ACLU got involved in the case, he said, to "keep the government out of the bedroom."

Though the laws don't punish people for owning sex toys, banning their sale is a backdoor attempt to discourage their use, Lopez said.

"People have a fundamental right to engage in lawful sexual practices in the privacy of their home," Lopez said. "It's not like this stuff is available in Macy's. Kids aren't allowed in. You or I wouldn't accidentally walk into one."

Wonder how long it'll take Harper to import this into Canada along with the "God Bless" part he loves in his speeches.

[D-Sisive]

next thing you know, it'll become a commy place where you can only have kids after applying for a license (although for some parents to be, its not a bad thing haha)

so are they gonna ban cucumbers and bananas and gerbils etc etc

[fakishan]

what a backward society. we can do without "those" kind of people.

[FastFokker]

what a backward society.Amen.

[ElChico]

A anti-christian anti-america thread to balance with the anti-iran anti-islam thread. How quaint.

It's amazing how alike america and iran, and islam and christianity are at times.

[Bree]

It's funny how much free time some people have on their hands to think up something like this.

[FastFokker]

It's funny how much free time some people have on their hands to think up something like this.No doubt, they should be having fun with their spouses.. with sex toys!

Wasn't there a recent study of the worlds citizens and it showed that Americans were the least sexually fulfilled and satisfied with their partners?

Or something to that near effect. They shouldn't be banning sex toys, they should be HANDING THEM OUT!

[gei]

Agreed. Another backwards society. Sadly many parts of America are still dominated by their own breed of radical religious extremists.

Fortunately however there are plenty of enlightened americans to fight back against this.

And as much as some people hate Harper, I don't think Canada or Canadians would tolerate these types of restrictions, nor do I think the conservatives have any interest in implementing them.

[Bree]

No doubt, they should be having fun with their spouses.. with sex toys!

Wasn't there a recent study of the worlds citizens and it showed that Americans were the least sexually fulfilled and satisfied with their partners?

Or something to that near effect. They shouldn't be banning sex toys, they should be HANDING THEM OUT!

That's way too funny!!!!!!! :lol: :lol:

[FastFokker]

Fortunately however there are plenty of enlightened americans to fight back against this. :lol: I feel on the floor!

Good one.

[NG]

Fortunately however there are plenty of enlightened americans to fight back against this.


Recent police raids in Davenport's county have targeted adult-oriented businesses.

The sheriff's office there seized movies, sex toys, sexual-enhancement pills and surveillance tapes from two businesses in January.

One of the stores, Priscilla's, sued the sheriff's office, claiming the raid violated constitutional rights and asked for the return of the seized items. Sheriff Chuck Wright refused.

Doesn't sound like it...


And as much as some people hate Harper, I don't think Canada or Canadians would tolerate these types of restrictions, nor do I think the conservatives have any interest in implementing them.

I'm sure they do and will if Canadians ever give them the chance to do it. Mind you with Abortion, Gay Marriage, Legal sex shows it's not like we haven't given them enough to work on first.

[FastFokker]

If Canada started shutting down the sex industry, Quebec would definitely seperate! :lol:

[gei]

:lol: I feel on the floor!

Good one.

Doesn't sound like it...

Fine you guys are right. All 300,000,000 or so Americans are mindless Christian sheep who must obey their master Bush.

(rolling eyes)

[ElChico]

Fine you guys are right. All 300,000,000 or so Americans are mindless Christian sheep who must obey their master Bush.

(rolling eyes)

Why do people blame Bush? This is State Law.

[FastFokker]

Fine you guys are right. All 300,000,000 or so Americans are mindless Christian sheep who must obey their master Bush.Get your facts straight.

There are not 300,000,000 mindless Christian sheep in South Carolina.

[north77]

*shakes head* Surprising to read about this in SC.

If they shut down the local shops, I'm sure business would be via USPS. :cheesygri

"There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation"
- 1967 P.E Trudeau

[d_jedi]

That's pretty fcuked up. The government has no place in our bedrooms.

[poedua]

A anti-christian anti-america thread to balance with the anti-iran anti-islam thread. How quaint.

It's amazing how alike america and iran, and islam and christianity are at times.

next thing you know the fundamantalists in SC will want to ban women from attending soccer games ( as clerics are calling for in Iran ) :)

[fakishan]

God's Senator: Sam Brownback Seeks Christian Fascism, Theocracy
Sam Brownback is a Republican Senator from Kansas who would probably like to be President. The far Christian Right also seems to want him to be the next president because he agrees with all their most extreme views. Sam Brownback wants to be elected president, but it really doesn't appear that he believes in democracy as much as he believes in a fascist Christian theocracy.

[Sam Brownback] tells a story about a chaplain who challenged a group of senators to reconsider their conception of democracy. “How many constituents do you have?” the chaplain asked. The senators answered: 4 million, 9 million, 12 million. “May I suggest,” the chaplain replied, “that you have only one constituent?”

Brownback pauses. That moment, he declares, changed his life. “This” -- being senator, running for president, waving the flag of a Christian nation -- “is about serving one constituent.” He raises a hand and points above him.

Now [Sam Brownback] has become a Catholic. He was baptized not in a church but in a chapel tucked between lobbyists’ offices on K Street that is run by Opus Dei, the secretive lay order founded by a Catholic priest who advocated “holy coercion” and considered Spanish dictator Francisco Franco an ideal of worldly power.

I wonder who Sam Brownback sees as the ideal Franco for America. Himself, perhaps? Conservative Republicans are already well on the way to favoring an authoritarian state where most freedoms are eliminated in order to defend freedom, as Glenn Greenwald notes:

Reporters should be thrown into prison. Citizens should be removed from political events for wearing political t-shirts. The President has the right to break the law for our own good. Politicians who criticize the Administration are traitors and should be imprisoned, or worse. And Supreme Court Justices should be impeached -- or worse. Does any of that sound like America to you?

And, oh - it’s vital that we fight The Terrorists so that we don’t lose our freedoms. And the principal objective our foreign policy is to run around teaching other countries how to be democratic and free.

It’s not possible to believe that you are defending liberty while also opposing liberty, so how do people like this promote their views without the skulls exploding from the contradictions? Usually, they manage to think that the preservation of “liberty” in an abstract sense is furthered by suppressing the unnecessary “liberties” of political enemies who threaten the existence of social order, social institutions, and religious morality. They need to have their liberties taken away for their own good and for the greater good. More often than not, political repression is done out of a sense of love, not hate.

He is running for president because murder is always on his mind: the abortion of what he considers fetal citizens. He speaks often and admiringly of John Brown, the abolitionist who massacred five pro-slavery settlers just north of the farm where Brownback grew up. Brown wanted to free the slaves; Brownback wants to free fetuses. [...]

Sex, in all its various forms, is at the center of Brownback’s agenda. America, he believes, has divorced sexuality from what is sacred. [...] The senator would gladly roll back the sexual revolution altogether if he could, but he knows he can’t, so instead he dreams of something better: a culture of “faith-based” eroticism in which premarital passion plays out not in flesh but in prayer.

Isn’t it interesting that people like Sam Brownback are so consumed with thoughts about sex, insisting that sexual matters are the most important issues facing society. Why aren’t things like poverty or racism as important? Is the fact that people have sex outside marriage and without reference to Brownback’s religious beliefs really more important than the fact that so many children go to bed hungry every night, or that so many people die every day from preventable diseases? Apparently, yes — but that’s not the thinking of a rational adult.

And what about those of us uninterested in prayer? Brownback may not be able to enforce his views now, but he clearly would like to have the power to do so in the future. Sam Brownback is working towards this future through The Family or The Fellowship, a secretive group of Christian fascists who have modeled their organization on those used by the communists and Nazis:

“Communists use cells as their basic structure,” declares a confidential Fellowship document titled “Thoughts on a Core Group.” “The mafia operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four-man squad. Hitler, Lenin and many others understood the power of a small group of people.” Under Reagan, Fellowship cells quietly arranged meetings between administration officials and leaders of Salvadoran death squads, and helped funnel military support to Siad Barre, the brutal dictator of Somalia, who belonged to a prayer cell of American senators and generals.

Their desire to transform America into a theocracy is not hidden, even though they tend to hide the extent of their power:

If passed, [the Constitution Restoration Act] will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power.

I’ve always found the Constitution Restoration Act to be interesting because it seems to me to be an admission that the Christian Right is... wrong. Why remove from the federal courts the power to hear cases in a particular area if it’s obvious that the decisions in such cases would go the way the Christian Right would like?

Religious conservatives support measures like the Constitution Restoration Act because they realize that they are wrong about the law and that even conservative judges who are in their ideological corner will have to rule against them more often than not. The only way to “win” is to rig the game and remove the power of the courts to stop them.

It’s no coincidence that undermining the independence and power of the judiciary is a standard tactic in fascist grabs for power.

[C]ompassionate conservatism, as Colson conceives it and Brownback implements it, is strikingly similar to plain old authoritarian conservatism. In place of liberation, it offers as an ideal what Colson calls “biblical obedience” and what Brownback terms “submission.” The concept is derived from Romans 13, the scripture by which Brownback and Colson understand their power as God-given: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” [...] Brownback doesn’t demand that everyone believe in his God -- only that they bow down before Him.

What’s the difference between what Sam Brownback wants and what Muslim extremists want? Nothing. Absent any gods that actually come down to earth and make themselves known, the only bowing that can be done is before a god’s self-proclaimed representative — like Sam Brownback. In the end, that’s what all theocracies become: a means for self-righteous humans to draw more power and authority to themselves, allowing them to dominate and control all others. Theocracies, like any fascist state, are run by human beings who are drunk with power and more than willing to wield it like a club in their effort to purify, cleanse, and make the nation worthy of their holy leadership. source (http://atheism.about.com/b/a/254196.htm)

[fakishan]

On Jerry Falwell's talk show Listen America, Timothy LaHaye used stark language to describe the state of the nation: "We're in a religious war and we need to aggressively oppose secular humanism; these people are as religiously motivated as we are and they are filled with the devil."

Hate speech as such gets on TV, while reasonable people tune out, the tens of millions of extremist christians in America remained glue to their television screens.

[fakishan]

While we are focused on theoretical ennemies, our way or life is being broken down by extremists at home. By our own.

We can and must fight them.

Iran has never tried to make us like them, it's our own misguided people that are trying to turn us into an Iran.

I use the term "us" as I don't make a disctinction between the US and Canada, we are much closer intergrated that most realize.

[KsprayDad]

If Canada started shutting down the sex industry, Quebec would definitely seperate! :lol:


And I would have to learn French and move there!

[asim99]

damn those american taliban!

[FastFokker]

I hope Team America decides to invade the USA, spread democracy and liberate the poor people. :lol:

[fakishan]

I hope Team America decides to invade the USA, spread democracy and liberate the poor people. :lol:
seriously, if any people really are in need of liberation, it's americans.

liberation from major hypocrisy. :lol:

[Suzy Q]

"We're focused on the hard-core magazines, videos ... the hard-core porn," he said.

Well I guess they better ban use of the internet too then.

[FastFokker]

Congratulations to the United States on their continued success of criminalizing every and all of their citizens.

If you aren't doing something illegal today, you will be tomorrow! BOOOOYA!

[Rometiklan]

I think the conservatives need to...

Cut loose! Footloose!
Kick off your sunday shoes!
Please, Louise
Pull me offa my knees
Jack, get back
C'mon before we crack
Lose your blues
Everybody cut footloose ...!!!

[Suzy Q]

I think the conservatives need to...

Cut loose! Footloose!
Kick off your sunday shoes!
Please, Louise
Pull me offa my knees
Jack, get back
C'mon before we crack
Lose your blues
Everybody cut footloose ...!!!

Thanks...that song will be stuck in my head allllllll day now. :lol:

[xKagex]

Fine you guys are right. All 300,000,000 or so Americans are mindless Christian sheep who must obey their master Bush.

(rolling eyes)

I actually agree with you. There are a lot of American people who are very much awake to what is happening there. The canadian moral-superiority-complex we pretend to have is completely unwarranted in my opinion. On one hand we bash Americans for being so right-wing and conservative, and then we go and vote in the most pro-American, right-wing political party Canada has ever had. At least in America there are still plenty of people who are standing up for what is right, whereas in Canada we just shrug it off and bask in the fact that "hey, at least we're not American".

[poedua]

I actually agree with you. There are a lot of American people who are very much awake to what is happening there. The canadian moral-superiority-complex we pretend to have is completely unwarranted in my opinion. On one hand we bash Americans for being so right-wing and conservative, and then we go and vote in the most pro-American, right-wing political party Canada has ever had. At least in America there are still plenty of people who are standing up for what is right, whereas in Canada we just shrug it off and bask in the fact that "hey, at least we're not American".

Well said.

[ElChico]

I actually agree with you. There are a lot of American people who are very much awake to what is happening there. The canadian moral-superiority-complex we pretend to have is completely unwarranted in my opinion. On one hand we bash Americans for being so right-wing and conservative, and then we go and vote in the most pro-American, right-wing political party Canada has ever had. At least in America there are still plenty of people who are standing up for what is right, whereas in Canada we just shrug it off and bask in the fact that "hey, at least we're not American".

Well only 36% of Canada voted for Harper 51% voted Bush in the last elections.

[Spidey]

Why is it you can go into a casino and gamble your lifes savings away and become desolute, but this kind of stuff is frowned upon.

Oh not those people are having sex, thos dirty people. Thats not right.

I feel sorry for those people that think that. Sex twice a year, always with the lights off and the same position. No talking, just get it over with ;)


Heaven forbid people enjoy eahc other in the privacy of their own homes, or their friends homes ;)

[Rometiklan]

Thanks...that song will be stuck in my head allllllll day now. :lol:

Glad to be of service, Suzy. :)

[NG]

so are they gonna ban cucumbers and bananas and gerbils etc etc

Just bought a cucumber today so I guess the S.C. fuzz will be after me too. They were all out of banana's a gerbils :(





;)

[NG]

Fine you guys are right. All 300,000,000 or so Americans are mindless Christian sheep who must obey their master Bush.

(rolling eyes)

Progressive Americans tend to be together in larger areas like NY, Cali etc. I'm not saying you're wrong - what I am saying is that the article clearly states that this isn't something new that they're trying to do - just a variation on somethign that has already had success.

The real kicker is that often these segments of radical religion conservatives are able to expand their beliefs into the areas progressive Americans have made home (US pot laws is a past example and we'll see on abortion...)

[BadDrafter]

Hopefully it will end where the Americans ban the study of science and ban the use of technology. They should errect a theocracy, I would see it as the ultimate irony for the people who hate the mulahs so much. This would effectively end their hegemony in the world and send them to the 3rd world where they rightfully belong clutching their bibles in hand.

It's extreme but I hope that cooler heads don't prevail.

[fakishan]

It's extreme but I hope that cooler heads don't prevail.

haha, i'm with you on that, but I wouldn't want Canada to be suck into such a degenerative end.

[FastFokker]

then we go and vote in the most pro-American, right-wing political party Canada has ever had.Wasn't it you who has previously pointed out that most of us did not vote for the Cons? :lol:

They won the PMO with what, somewhere around 35%? Heck that's about Bushes approval rating these days.

[konfusion666]

They won the PMO with what, somewhere around 35%? Heck that's about Bushes approval rating these days.

it's actually lower... but still above Nixon's level :-0

[BadDrafter]

it's actually lower... but still above Nixon's level :-0

Only Nixon could go to China.
http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t029/t029238a.jsm
I have yet to see the Bush admin do one positive thing in the world.

[gordholio]

Kind of strange that in a country where there is so much pornography, etc., a bill like this would be introduced. America sure is a country of extremes.

[Casanova]

Kind of strange that in a country where there is so much pornography, etc., a bill like this would be introduced. America sure is a country of extremes.
so no more sex toys in pornos? ;)