corrente

Among the many, many reasons we need President Kerry's inauguration day to arrive quickly is to get some better judges.

(I must admit I sat on this story (um, bad phrasing there) all week so as not to have it get lost in the convention coverage. This allowed Jesus'General and his evil commentors like G. D. Frogsdong and Anntichrist Coulter to get first crack (oh dear, more phrasing problems) at analysis. Shame on them all, the naughty people!)

(via AL AP newsindex)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 state law banning the sale of sex toys in Alabama, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state has a right to police the sale of devices including electronic vibrators and other products meant to stimulate the sex organs.

"If the people of Alabama in time decide that a prohibition on sex toys is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly, they can repeal the law and be finished with the matter," the court said. "On the other hand, if we today craft a new fundamental right by which to invalidate the law, we would be bound to give that right full force and effect in all future cases including, for example, those involving adult incest, prostitution, obscenity, and the like."

Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett disagreed, writing that the decision was based on the "erroneous foundation" that adults don't have a right to consensual sexual intimacy and that private acts can be made a crime in the name of promoting "public morality."

"This case is not, as the majority's demeaning and dismissive analysis suggests, about sex or about sexual devices. It is about the tradition of American citizens from the inception of our democracy to value the constitutionally protected right to be left alone in the privacy of their bedrooms and personal relationships," Barkett wrote in her dissent.

So if we let the poor, lonely but moral Widow Smith buy a vibrator it means we have to allow adult incest. Ahh, Alabama, whose state motto should be "Making Tennessee Look Good Since That Scopes Trial Thing."