What is wrong with Texas?

[chicken]

moominpapa posted this first on our staff list ...

Texas housewife busted for hawking erotic toys Sales rep for Brisbane firm sold vibrator to undercover agents.

What -- I repeat WHAT -- the bleep is wrong with Texas?

Comments

[bunnyohare.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding provincial and/or xenophobic:

Well, it is Texas. Isn't that enough. :)

[maryavatar.livejournal.com]

Err... vibrators are illegal in Texas? O.o Is it illegal to lean against the washing machine during spin cycle? How about fruit abuse? Is it illegal to sell suggestively shaped carrots? Wow, I bet they don't show the ads where the gypsy girl fellates a chocolate bar.

Sheesh, I just don't understand why some governments think making laws about it will stop people fucking they way they want to. If it's not hurting anyone, what's the problem?

[tannymonster.livejournal.com]

Oh my lord, I read about this yesterday and was all "What the fuck?"

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

It's illegal in a lot of places to sell vibrators. Now Texas seems to be the only state to enforce these old laws...

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

But why is it illegal? How does the twisted logic go? How stupid are these people?

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

That's what I was trying to imply! ;-)

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

If it's not hurting anyone, what's the problem?

These puritanically insane lawmakers probably felt jealous of people who were actually having fun, so they figured if they themselves are too represed to have fun, no one else should have a happy life, either. Spoilsports.

[paulv.livejournal.com]

If it feels good, it must be wrong and dirty. If you sell stuff that makes people feel good, you are wrong and dirty and going to hell.

Obviously that's broken, but I've got to believe it's at least internally consistent.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

The feminist in me says something to do with suppressing women's sexuality.
I just remember hearing the part of the Vagina Monologues where they talk about all the places that it's illegal to sell vibrators.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

This must be the same logic that tells Catholics to be "good" and not sin because they are not supposed to be happy until they get to "heaven" -- i.e. death is for enjoyment and life is for suffering, atonement, etc. Argh!

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

That is part of it, too. A lot of times this shows up in hypocritical ways.

[paulv.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- I almost mentioned something along the lines of Catholic guilt, but I don't really know anything about religion and the history of the country (save obvious things like the Salem witch trials and stuff). I also seem to recall seeing documentaries in which people made a big deal about JFK being Catholic, like it wasn't as popular as I think it is or something.

I've been trying to get in the heads of conservative religious types to figure out answers to questions like yours, but I can only seem to find conservatives that think the bible bangers are nuts. I frequently seem to have conversations with my conservative friends that involve us discussing some crazy right wing stuff (like what who's-his-name said after Sept. 11 about lesbians and the ACLU and stuff). I always say "You're a republican. Can't you talk to these people?!" but they are never any help.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

I think that if we went to Texas (god no) we would run into some actual crazies among conservatives. New England/coastal republicans may be more liberal than their mid-country cousins. They indeed may not be able to convince one another of anything.

Jerry Falwell was the one who made the comment abouts queers and the aclu being responsible for Sept. 11. What an ass.

[keever.livejournal.com]

The thing that kills me is that they actually spent the time and money on setting up a sting over freakin' vibrators. Were I a Texan, I'd be outraged that my tax dollars were funding that kind of use of law enforcement's resources.

But the article kind of cracks me up because of the detail that it goes into about the specifics of certain products. Somebody was having fun with that.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The way to find them is to go south. In my youth I thought of conservatives as cultural fundamentalist types because in Virginia many of them were. Around here they're more likely to be laissez-faire quasi-libertarians who are just pissed off at real or perceived excesses of the local liberals.

Nationally, the Republican Party has always been walking this tightrope, pandering to category I while not doing so sufficiently to scare off category II. Of course, major American political parties have to be so broad that they're going to have to do this to some extent. The Republicans have been better at the game for the past 20 years or so than the Democrats have been at balancing the interests of their various factions. But I think that speaks more to the mistakes of Democratic political strategists; the game is inherently more difficult for the Republicans, because the cultural reactionaries are so important (even increasingly so) in regional politics in the Southeast. Every so often they scare people enough that the Republicans lose some mainstream support because of it; I think that happened in 1992, and part of the 1994 House Contract with America insurgency was an effort to keep them quieter than usual.

So I've been expecting this big split to happen in the Republican Party for ages, but it never quite does. The party leadership is really good at constructing messages that bind the factions together, in part by demonizing liberals (and post-Sept. 11 they've got an ironclad one having to do with external enemies). The small-government libertarian conservatives never quite regard the cultural conservatives as enough of a threat to bolt (or they're more freaked out by the antics of extreme campus lefties, who are smaller in number and far less powerful but live closer to them); and the Democratic Party hasn't been an ideologically appropriate place for them to go anyway.