1/04 The Lawrence Decision Landmark Case vs Alabama Can Ban Sex Toy Sales Based on Morality per 11th Circuit

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1/04 The Lawrence Decision Landmark Case
For Privacy not Morality Argument

U.S. Supreme Court Justices say in Lawrence v. Texas:
"Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. In our tradition the State is not omnipresent in the home. And there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence. Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct." [Kennedy, writing for the majority, 02-102, June 2003]
Or:
"A law branding one class of persons as criminal solely based on the State's moral disapproval of that class and the conduct associated with that class runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause, under any standard of review." [O'Connor, concurring in part, 02-102, June 2003

Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, wrote, "..that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights. ... That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I believe that sexuality falls under pursuit of happiness !
Contrast this U.S. Supreme Court case with a recent 11th Circuit Case supporting the outlawing of sex toys !
Alabama Can Ban Sex Toy Sales Based on Morality per 11th Circuit but ..before the Lawrence Supreme Court Case

In the case regarding the State of Alabama and the banning of the sale of sex toys, here is what the 11th Circuit Court concluded regarding the District Court's determination that the statute lacked a rational basis.

"The State's interest in public morality is a legitimate interest rationally served by the statute. The crafting and safeguarding of public morality has long been an established part of the States' police power to legislate and indisputably is a legitimate government interest under rational basis scrutiny. A statute banning the commercial distribution of sexual devices is rationally related to this interest. Alabama argues a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate legislative interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex' and that it is enough for a legislature to reasonably believe that commerce in the pursuit of orgasms by artificial means for their own sake is detrimental to the health and morality of the State." [Williams v. Pryor, 240 F.3d 944 (11th Cir. 2001)]

VS. Lawrence Case which seems to have overturned that line of thinking!