During my freshman year at Berkeley (that’s 2000), I wrote an article for The Daily Californian about how Pleasures, a sex toy shop in Alabama, was being supported by Berkeley’s own Good Vibrations.
Good Vibrations, a Berkeley sex toy store, is supporting the cause of Sherri Williams, owner of Pleasures, a small chain of sex shops in northern Alabama, whose business may be in jeopardy.
In 1998, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill that added a ban on the sale of sex toys to a current state obscenity law. Williams, who took the ban to court, contacted Good Vibrations, a fairly large and well-established adult sex toy shop, two years ago when the case was just beginning, she said yesterday.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court refused to hear her case:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to the state’s 1998 ban on sex-toy sales. A federal court injunction has prevented enforcement of the law during the challenge by Pleasures’ owner Sherri Williams, but the state attorney general’s office said it expected the court to lift that injunction in a couple of days.
Best part of the story?
Williams said she would not change what products she sells, just how she markets them.
“As of tomorrow, we will not be selling toys for the stimulation of human genitals. We’ll be selling toys for medical purposes and to relieve stress,” Williams said. She said the inventory will not change, just “the way we sell it.
“Remember you couldn’t sell a bong, but you could sell a water pipe? Same thing.”
Not sure what to say!
This is very interesting