A number of US states are implementing new laws limiting the availability of sex toys. In Texas, lawmakers are pushing to make the purchasing of vibrators and sex toys much more difficult, prohibiting their sale in major retailers like Walmart, Target and CVS.
For an idea of how much of a dent stopping their sales would cause – the Clio’s sexual massager sold one million units in just eight months after going on sale at Walmart. At the moment, Texans can easily pick up a sex toy from countless large stores in the US, where they are kept behind glass cabinets.
Texas already has one bizarre sex statute which limits the amounts of sex toys a consenting adult can own to six. Meanwhile, any legal age Texan – apart from ex convicts – can walk into one of these shops and take home a small arsenal. According to Penal Code Section 43.21 means a “device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs”.
Again, in Texas, a new bill introduced this month would require age verification to purchase “obscene devices” online. Anyone going online to discretely buy a device will be forced to provide a government-issued identification, even if they bought it with a credit card – which can’t be issued to under 18s.
Back in February, another unusual law was put forward in Ohio to criminalise men’s ejaculation unless it was for the purpose of conception. The bill, tabled by Democratic House Representative Anita Somani, aimed to regulate male reproductive rights in the same manner as women’s.
“You don’t get pregnant on your own,” Somani declared, further adding, “If you’re going to penalise someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalise the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy?” The proposed legislation, dubbed the Conception Begins at Erection Act, would make it illegal for any man in the state to “discharge semen without the intent to fertilise.”
Exceptions are provided for instances where protection or contraceptives are used during sexual activity, masturbation, sperm donation, or sexual relations among LGBTQ+ community members that do not “produce ova.”
There are also a whole host of bizarre sex laws already in place, or recently repealed. Up until recently in Maryland, it was illegal to engage in oral sex, even between two consenting adults. The law has now been repealed. Maryland’s Article 27, Section 554, once prohibited “taking into his or her mouth the sexual organ of any other person” or “placing his or her sexual organ in the mouth of any other person.”
In Mississippi, BDSM pornography is outlawed completely, with a statute stating: “The depiction or description of flagellation or torture by or upon a person who is nude or in undergarments or in a bizarre or revealing costume for the purpose of sexual gratification.”
In Florida, lawmakers felt the need to stress what will seem like common sense to most – that having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal. In the US capital, Washington lawmakers barred any sexual position other than missionary. The laws also extend to the animals of the US, with moose in Alaska banned from having sex on the streets of Fairbanks.
Two that are less whacky and more sinister include the lack of specific laws prohibiting bestiality in Washington prior to 2005 after earlier sodomy laws were repealed. It came to the attention of the public after a man was killed during a sex act with a horse.
In Tennessee, HIV-positive sex workers fall under an “aggravated prostitution” statute, which sees them hit with mandatory lifetime registration as a “violent sex offender” regardless of whether transmission occurred or was intended.
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