The state of Alabama is overrun with rabbits. The most common live rabbit in the
state is the cottontail, which is found in a variety of locales, and the second
most common is the marsh rabbit, which inhabits the marshes and swamps of far
southern Alabama.
Rabbit hunting is one of the most popular and necessary sports in the
Yellowhammer state, and the season for hunting the varmints there runs from
October 1 to February 29 (notify Mitt Romney, please). Alabama Game and Fish.com,
the website of a magazine by that name, features numerous articles of advice
about the sport, including one entitled "Unusual Ways to Boost Your Bunny
Bliss."
Mr. Troy King, Republican Attorney General of Alabama, will soon be out rabbit
hunting himself, by his own testimony, and he doesn't have to worry about it
being the off-season. The rabbit he will be gunning for is a mechanical one,
namely, the vibrator Rabbit.
What is the habitat of this rabbit, and why does this attorney general (who has,
among other things, an extremely high rate of violent crime in his state to
worry about) have it in his sights? For those of you who may be unfamiliar with
such matters, it is essentially a vibrating dildo atop which sits a small rubber
rabbit, complete with tiny, upright ears, which also vibrates when the device is
running. The little rabbit's purpose, to be direct, is to stimulate the
clitoris, while the other part of the device provides internal pleasure. The
device produces intense orgasms, and it produces them quickly, and, if desired,
in rapid succession.
According to the website TheRabbitVibrator.com, the device has sold in the
millions world-wide and is by far the most popular sex toy across the planet. It
is here that Mr. Troy King enters the bunny-hatch. He has vowed that he will
soon begin enforcing Alabama's official ban on sales of sex toys, and if and
when he does so, by inference, the Rabbit Vibrator should be his number one
target. He will perforce be seeking to end this most widespread way of boosting
bunny bliss in the former capital of the Confederacy.
A decade ago, a fundamentalist-dominated Alabama legislature passed a law called
the Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act. Although the original impetus behind the law
was a desire to stamp out nude dancing in parts of a specific county (Madison),
it ended up containing a provision forbidding the sale of any device "designed
or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."
The penalty for violating this provision is a $10,000 fine and one year in jail.
The owner of a local sex-toy shop quickly challenged the law's
constitutionality, and the case began slowly winding its way through the court
system. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finally upheld the law--ruling
that as silly as it might be, they did not want to create a new right to sexual
privacy in order to overturn it--and last October the U.S. Supreme Court declined
to review their decision.
Actually enforcing this law, however, is bound to prove problematic. For one
thing, despite the Alabama legislature's stab at it, the term "sex toy" still
lacks any clear definition--to say the least. For instance, the Magic Wand
vibrator manufactured by Hitachi is marketed as a back massager, but almost
everyone knows that it is little used for that purpose. Not to mention all sorts
of objects that do not need to be manufactured, which in fact I won't mention.
The Alabama law contains exceptions for "medical or educational purposes," and
you can foresee some places where those might lead (vibrators were utilized in
the 19th century by doctors to assist women patients who were, in today's
parlance, "pre-orgasmic").
And then there is the biggest problem of all for General King: sex toys of all
kinds being freely sold over the internet. In fact, General, get a load of this.
If you go to AlabamaRabbit.com, you find three sponsored links: one for
University of Alabama dog gear (beagles are used to hunt live rabbits in
Alabama); one for the Alabama Bureau of Tourism; and one for "discount adult
toys," LoveBetterToys.com. LoveBetterToys.com offers a variety of rabbit-style
vibrators, including the High Joy Rabbit Purple BX and the Petite Love Bunny for
beginners, which has a protruding nose as well as ears. General, I think you're
outflanked.
To what else may Mr. Troy King devote his time and energy if his rabbit hunt
comes a cropper? Well, for one thing, since his days in college (when he
frequently wrote impassioned letters to the student newspaper on the subject) he
has been a dogged and rabid anti-homosexual agitator, and continuing that effort
could be consuming. For another, revealingly, his wife recently caught him in
bed--their bed--with a younger, rival sex partner (and banished him from their
home, reportedly). King had to resign from his position as John McCain's Alabama
campaign chair.
It is a fact that in these days of liberated sexuality, many women openly employ
their sex toys in front of their partners, so you might wonder, was there by
ironic chance a pet rabbit found lurking in the vicinity of this non-conjugal
activity? No such finding was reported. But you have to consider, Attorney
General King's alleged sex partner on this occasion did not have a clitoris.