Even with issues like school choice, immigration, abortion and the state budget looming over the 89th Texas Legislature, the GOP apparently still has time to spend on proposed legislation that is, primarily, based on one small-town Republican’s moral outrage.
State Rep. Hillary Hickland, a freshman lawmaker representing District 55, situated just north of Austin, has introduced House Bill 1549 which would ban Texas retailers from selling “obscene devices” — aka sex toys — unless they file paperwork to become sexually oriented businesses. The potential law allows for fines up to $5,000.
In Texas, sexually-oriented businesses are usually strip clubs and adult bookstores. They are subject to strict zoning laws and, as The Austin Chronicle notes, the shops would have to card every person who entered to make sure they are at least 18 years old, and they would have to keep count of how many customers come in the store because the state requires SOBs to pay $10 for every person who enters the business.
Local jurisdictions should as a city council would set the definition of a sexually-oriented business.
If it becomes law, HB 1549 could have a serious impact on several retailers in the Gayborhood, according to lobbyist Mike Hendrix, who represents the Texas Arts & Commerce Association and the Cedar Springs Merchants Association — and not just because of the impact it could have on some shops.
“It could be a Trojan horse for a lot of really bad amendments that restrict business and commerce as well as attempt to legislate morality,” Hendrix told the Chronicle.
Texas actually already has an “obscenity statute” on the books which outright bans all sales of sex toys. First passed in 1973 and last updated in 2003, the law was deemed unconstitutional and unenforceable by a district court judge in 2008.
That ruling came despite the best efforts of then-solicitor general (now U.S. senator) Ted Cruz, who claimed in court filings that use of sex toys was the same thing as “hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy,” and that the state has a valid interest in “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.”
— Tammye Nash