`Neck' massager.
Kiss those neck massagers goodbye, ladies:
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to question a Texas law that bars the sale of dildos and other ``obscene devices,'' turning away an appeal by a store clerk facing prosecution.
The justices made no comment in rejecting the appeal, which argued that the law violated a constitutional right to sexual privacy. The court last year turned down a similar challenge to an Alabama law.
Texas is one of a handful of states that ban sexual devices. Courts have upheld laws in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas and struck down restrictions in Colorado, Kansas and Louisiana.
Texas bans the manufacture, sale, distribution and promotion of ``devices including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marked as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.''
Ignacio Sergio Acosta, a clerk at Trixx Adult Bookstore in El Paso, was arrested in 2003 for selling a vibrator to two undercover police officers. A state trial judge threw out the case, saying the law was unconstitutional. An appeals court overturned that ruling and said the prosecution could go forward.
In his Supreme Court appeal, Acosta pointed to a 2003 Supreme Court decision that said states can't ban private homosexual conduct.
We're going back to the 1950s, and breaking all speed limits getting there. That last line, "In his Supreme Court appeal, Acosta pointed to a 2003 Supreme Court decision that said states can't ban private homosexual conduct," is the most chilling. I see it as an invitation to states to begin the assault on Griswald vs. Connecticut, the landmark case allowing the sale of contraceptives to unmarried people and which laid the groundwork for abortion by describing "zones of privacy" in the Constitution.
Just when it looks like the Republican party may be imploding under the weight of their own hubris, greed and overreach, there comes that bracing jolt of cold water splashed in our faces: We're going to be stuck with Bush's judicial appointees for decades.
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