My Pleasure Store

Opening an Adult Store in the Southern United States is challenging, I chose to open one in the buckle of the bible belt also known as Huntsville Alabama. And so began my 9 year battle to uphold Alabamians constitutional right to privacy, free from governmental intrusions.

It seemed like a novel idea at the time. Create a boutique environment where women and couples would feel comfortable shopping for their most intimate items. Of course this was back in the day, 1993, when those stores existed in back alleys, glowing in neon on the shadier side of town. My little boutique, aptly named Pleasures, enticed women, dared and challenged them to come inside and explore what the men of the South still claimed to be theirs and theirs alone.

As my reputation for being an open minded, nonjudgmental boutique owner/ unintended sex counselor grew, so did the business. Upon opening my second store in Decatur AL, Mayor Price proclaimed that he would establish a task force to study the effects of my business on his little town. Despite that never one complaint was filed, never one police incident occurred, the Mayor decided to zone my “Pleasures” boutique out of his city. This marked the beginning of my 9 year battle to uphold Alabamians constitutional rights, because Mayor Price failed to convince his City Commission to pass the zoning ordinance due to the concentrated efforts of my well known Florida based Civil Attorney Luke Lirot, the good Mayor called in a favor to his Senator and close friend Tom Butler and on the last day of the legislative session in 1998 a Bill was passed into law banning the sale of adult toys in the state of Alabama, or more specifically stating in part “it shall be unlawful to sell anything that it primarily designed for the stimulation of human genitals”

If it hadn’t been for the honed investigative skills of a newspaper journalist, I might have not have known that this law passed until they slapped the cuffs on my wrists and confiscated the contents of my two large adult boutiques. A female Reporter for the Decatur Daily called me at my office, which at that time was residing in St. Pete Beach Florida above the newest Pleasures store front I had opened on the waterfront and she asked me how I felt about the new law banning the sale of adult toys. Shock, fear, and then anger washed over me as I struggled to conceive an answer to an inconceivable statement. Could a state really outlaw adult toys?

I spent the next 3 consecutive business days focusing every minute on ways to fight this law. I called no less than 40 civil rights attorneys across the State and the nation. Each referring me to another one and each one either asked for a ridiculously high retainer fee or politely stated that they would have no interest in taking on a case of that nature. I called the Alabama ACLU, I called the Free Speech Coalition. When I was convinced that no one would want their name in newspaper associated with Adult Toys, I received a return call from a Huntsville Law firm, the attorney I had requested was unavailable but Attorney Mike Fees was willing to listen intently to my now desperate plea for help. Mike Fees stated that he had previously worked with an Attorney retained by the National ACLU and said that he would present the facts of my case to the folks there and if they, like he, felt that there was a violation of the 4^th Amendment, they may take my case and he would serve as my legal council if they did. Their initial response was promising, the ACLU agreed to fly one of their attorneys down to Huntsville AL and meet with myself and Attorney Fees. His suggestion was to bring other potential plaintiffs to the meeting. Given that 99% of other store owners still operated the stereotypical adult bookstore, I was hard pressed to find anyone that would be an asset to my case until I heard of a woman that was doing in home Parties. Her name was B.J. Bailey and she was as quirky as her name, but she represented a more personal aspect of selling adult toys and agreed to attend the meeting.

The ACLU Attorney met with our group in July Of 1998 and after numerous debates, he agreed to submit the case to his directors who quickly approved funding to begin the casework. Thankfully I now had not only one really good local attorney, but a whole team of attorneys supplied by the ACLU. Together we fought for over 9 years to overturn the ban on the sale of Adult toys and the District Federal Judge Lynwood Smith ruled in a our favor repeatedly, but the District Attorney Bill Pryor (later appointed to the Court of Appeals we fought in) would not accept defeat and he and his successor DA Troy King appealed every victory we were awarded. Each Appeal brought defeat and a remand back to our District Federal Court until there were no more appeals left and we took our case to the Supreme Court, twice and despite elaborate friends of Courts briefs filed and petitions to hear our case, the Supreme Court refused and to this day it remains illegal to sell anything primarily designed for the stimulation of human genitals. However, it is lawful to sell such devices if a medical reason is established prior to the purchase. All customers of Pleasures must anonymously establish their medical purpose on a simple form prior to making a purchase at Pleasures because in a nutshell, it is illegal to purchase an adult toy for immoral reasons, but legal to purchase one for medical reasons.

In the years since our Supreme Court “Defeat-by-Default” on October 10^th of 2007, I have continued to operate my two upscale Romance Boutiques in Huntsville and Decatur Alabama. The 6 other surrounding states used our court briefs to overturn their antiquated laws banning the sale of adult toys. Alabama is the only state in the nation that still refuses to get with the times and overturn their silly ban on the sale of toys.

I have found that introducing forward thinking new concepts is enough to keep me feeling challenged and fulfilled even after almost 19 years of selling adult toys. Our Guns for Adult Toys campaign took many dangerous guns off the streets and reinforced the concept of “Making Love not War” and when I opened “America’s First Adult Store Drive Through” in an effort to distribute free condoms to curb unwanted pregnancies and STD’s in Huntsville, the residents were quietly thankful but the nation laughed out loud as the famous comedians adlibbed their one liners. The grass roots campaign that collected old batteries in exchange for free solar powered adult toys when Pleasures went green for St. Patty’s Day was a huge success as well. I said all of this to say… if there is one thing I have learned in all my years of making people smile, I find it to be the most rewarding thing of all when I can give something back to the community that has grown to love, appreciate and support my upscale romance boutiques. Thank you all!

20/20′s John Stossel Interviews
with Sherri Williams

Sherri Williams fights for freedom in the bedroom

Sex Hysteria “Sex Toy Freedom fighter”

I’ll give you my vibrators when you pry them from my cold, dead hand,”