Texas is the land where regulation is always second, or so they say. However, it’s also a state where politicians have chosen to regulate oddly specific things, from laws allowing residents to hunt feral hogs from hot air balloons to laws outlining the number of dildos a person can own.
Recently, Texas lawmakers have set their sights on something that has become ubiquitous in recent years: sex toys in retail stores. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they want them out.
A ban on sex toys in stores. Republican Rep. Hillary Hickland is behind the proposal to ban sex toys. Earlier this week, Hickland filed HB 1549, a bill that would ban retail stores such as Walmart, Target, and CVS from selling sex toys. Under the bill, only a “sexually oriented business” will be able to sell sex toys.
This includes adult bookstores and video stores, nude studios, and “other commercial enterprise the primary business of which is the offering of a service or the selling, renting, or exhibiting of devices or any other items intended to provide sexual stimulation or sexual gratification to the customer.” Fines for violating the proposed statue can reach up to $5,000 for each infraction.
“Our family-oriented retailers should reflect the values of the communities they serve," Hickland said in a statement, according to Chron. "Parents do not consent to their children being exposed to obscene devices while shopping for toothpaste. House Bill 1549 provides common-sense protections for families by ensuring parents can shop with their children without encountering sexually explicit items that compromise their innocence.”
The Texas obscenity law. While it’s currently legal to sell sex toys in Texas, that hasn’t always been the case. The ban on the sale of sex toys was instituted in 1973 as part of the state’s Obscenity Statute, or Section 43.21. of the Texas Penal Code. For years, violations could be charged as a misdemeanor and even a felony. It was punishable by up to two years in jail.
That all changed in 2008, when a federal appeals court overruled the statue. In its ruling, the court stated that the statute violated the 14th Amendment, which guarantees an individual’s right to privacy.
Notably, the statute is still on the books, although the courts have deemed it to be “unconstitutional and unenforceable.”
The language about dildos. Besides banning the sale of sex toys, the Texas Obscenity Statute also specified the number of “obscene devices”—for example, dildos—a person could own: six. The number was not chosen at random, but rather because lawmakers assumed that people who owned more than six obscene devices that were identical or similar had the intent to distribute them.
The strange law made headlines in 2016 when students organized a gun protest at the University of Texas at Austin. The protest, where students handed out thousands of dildos, was aimed at a new law that allowed concealed guns on public college campuses.
“You would receive a citation for taking a dildo to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class,” the organizers wrote on a Facebook event page. “Heaven forbid the penis.”
In the end, no one was arrested for handing out massive amounts of dildos.
Sex toys at retail stores isn’t exactly new. While Texas lawmakers are making a fuss about sex toys in retail stores right now, the products have been sold on their shelves for years. Some manufacturers credit the release of steamy books like 50 Shades of Grey, a breakout novel that brought sadomasochism and sexuality to the mainstream, to making it more acceptable for people to buy sex toys.
In 2022, Business Insider reported that the sexual wellness industry was worth $10 billion annually.
“Intimacy is something we need in order to survive and feel good,” Rebecca Alvarez Story, cofounder and CEO of Bloomi, a company that sells sex toys and intimate health products, told the outlet. “This industry in general, intimacy and sexual wellness, has been becoming more normalized over the years over the last decade, for sure.”
Images | Gwen Mamanoleas
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