Republicans Are Panicking Because They Somehow Just Found Out You Can Buy Vibrators at CVS

On Saturday night at the New York Young Republicans Club gala, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene packed enough wild statements into her short speech that it’s difficult to keep count. But one highlight was her need to share her newfound knowledge that you can just walk into a store and buy a sex toy, something that has been commonplace for years. 

“By the way, you can pick up a butt plug or a dildo at Target and CVS nowadays,” she said on stage. “I don’t even know how we got here... This is the state that we’re living in right now.”

Greene was seemingly repeating something she may have seen on a segment on right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show the night before, where correspondent Trace Gallagher claimed that one of Carlson’s producers “happened to notice” that CVS is “now” selling sex toys. 

“And they appear to be a relative bargain,” Gallagher said. “For example, there’s a Tush Cush for $11.97, though the accompanying lotion that goes with it will set you back an additional $11.97. And if you’ve got the cash, right there in the middle, the Buzzy Butt will run you $32.50. Information I just wanted you to know about New York.”

“But it’s immoral to sell Marlboros,” Carlson replied. 

This might be the first time Carlson’s anonymous, wandering producer, or Greene, have noticed all the vibrators in Target and CVS—they’re usually in the condom and lube aisle, if they ever looked for either of those items—but sex toys have been available at mainstream retailers for more than a decade. Condom companies like Trojan and Durex started selling their own brands of sex toys in major retailers as early as 2011. By 2012, stores including CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, Safeway, Target and Walmart sold toys alongside prophylactics. 

The statements by Gallagher are a fairly obvious attempt at moralistic rage-baiting that’s come to define Carlson’s show, and ranting about buttplugs was somehow the least bizarre thing Greene said on stage at the gala. She also said that she would have done a better job running the January 6 riot on the Capitol had she been in charge.

But this rhetoric isn’t new: demonizing sexual health and pleasure products is part of a conservative playbook that goes back decades.

Obscenity statutes in the South have attempted to vilify sex toys as political and moral linchpins in the past. Alabama’s 1998 statute, sponsored by Republican senator Tom Butler (who also voted in 2019 to ban abortion at any stage, including in cases of rape and incest) prohibits "any person to knowingly distribute, possess with intent to distribute, or offer or agree to distribute any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary value." It was supported by Christian conservative groups, including the Baptist organization Alabama Citizens' Action Program; in 2008, executive director Dan Ireland told the press that when it came to sex toys, he believed “laws are made to protect the public,” and “sometimes you have to protect the public against themselves.” 

Texas’ statute has an even longer history. Passed by the legislature in 1973, the original text forbade "a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” A 2003 update changed the wording to state: "A person commits an offense if, knowing its content and character, he wholesale promotes or possesses with intent to wholesale promote any obscene material or obscene device," and specifically named it an offense to own more than six of those devices. 

The town of Sandy Springs, Georgia enacted an ordinance in 2005 that banned retailers from publicly displaying of sex toys, classifying them as “obscene material.” The ordinance was struck down in 2017.

These laws sound archaic and unconstitutional, but they’ve had serious consequences: In 2004, a woman in Texas was arrested for violating Texas obscenity laws while hosting one of the many Tupperware-style private parties that sex toy sellers were forced to hold in people’s homes, instead of selling them openly through shops and stores. According to coverage of her arrest, her neighbors with strong Christian beliefs were offended by this, and called the police on her (the case was later dismissed). The courts deemed this law unconstitutional in 2008.

And who could forget Republican Texas senator and suspected MILF porn fan Ted Cruz’s crusade against sex toys. In 2007, his legal team filed a brief brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals in support of upholding the Texas law against selling sex toys. The brief, according to Mother Jones, argued that in order to protect “public morals,” there was a government interest in “discouraging prurient interests in sexual gratification, combating the commercial sale of sex, and protecting minors,” and in “discouraging…autonomous sex.” Cruz lost that argument, as the court countered that people have the “right to be free from governmental intrusion regarding ‘the most private human contact, sexual behavior.'”  

This is happening as the loudest voices in the GOP—Greene included—accuse queer and trans educators of “grooming” and libraries, clubs, and childrens’ events see increasing violence in the name of conservative Christian values. In this environment, it’s as unsurprising as it is disturbing to see the old rallying cry against sex toys persevere, repackaged as something new to panic about.