Few things get me as riled up as people butting into others’ sex lives. Denying people the right to marry because some people think what they do is too naughty is not good public policy in my book. Writing off politicians with good ideas because they screw around on their wives … well that leaves me uncharacteristically speechless.
What really gets me about this stuff is that it usually comes with an unhealthy dose of hypocrisy. The congressman who votes against gay rights gets busted cruising for guys at an airport bathroom. The pundits who bitch about John Edwards screwing around on his cancer-stricken wife don’t have much to say about John McCain cheating on and dumping his first wife, a woman who kept her own devastating accident a secret from McCain while he was a POW in order not to make his terrible situation even more stressful.
And then there’s Texas. A state so committed to its sodomy law it took the US Supreme Court to tell them to mind it’s own beeswax. A state so committed to dictating what its citizens may not do in their own bedrooms that it confiscated $50,000 worth of sex toys from an adult store in Houston. So where does the hypocrisy come in? Well it seems the 564 pleasure props sprouted little legs and walked out of the evidence room. Of course the official explanation is that they were destroyed. Never mind the fact that there is no court order authorizing the police to do that. Never mind that Houston police managed to “misplace” 30 guns a couple of months earlier after people with criminal records gained access to the property room.
But the biggest highlight of what is already a highlight-rich story is this quote from UT law professor Richard Segura, who claims the cops are under no obligation to safeguard the confiscated items:
“If I go over to your house and spend the night there and leave my shoes, can I expect my shoes to be there three years later?” he said. “What is the police department going to do with a bunch of (sex toys) … keep them?”
Apparently, Mr. Segura is under the impression that the owners of Adult Video Megaplexxx came over to the police station with a truckload of vibrators, dildoes, butt plugs, maybe an inflatable sheep, some Comfy Cuffs and a pocket pussy, hung out for a while, and then went home forgetting to take their goodies with them. What actually happened is that Houston police raided Adult Video Megaplexxx, removed the goodies in question, then failed to return said goodies when the case was over. Even though there’s all sorts of stuff in the Constitution about not depriving people of property without due process of law. But then it seems that Mr. Segura’s inability to come up with an adequate analogy is rivaled only by his tenuous grasp of the law.
Estela has a blog. Yipee. 