Privacy right
An encouraging victory last week for the quaint notion that consenting adults have a right to privacy in their own homes:
A federal appeals court on Thursday tossed out a Texas ban on the sale of sex toys, citing a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down that state’s sodomy law.
The sex-toy ban made it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, with a punishment of up to two years behind bars. Two Austin stores and a retail distributor challenged the law in 2004, but lost before a federal judge.
Last week, though, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the store owners.
“The state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct,” the appeals judges wrote. “The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification.”
Well, well.
Defenders of liberty and freedom should celebrate the 5th Circuit’s reasoning, as it throws up a slight impediment to the government authorities and bluenoses who seem to believe they have a right to regulate virtually every aspect of our personal behavior.
It’s a dangerous premise cloaked in the warm blanket of good intentions — and it needs to be confronted head on.