Joanne Webb could face jail for doing nothing more than making dildos available to Texans.

Webb is a fifth grade teacher who also works for Passion Parties, a San Francisco-based company with a line of adult “novelties” that Webb sells at Tupperware-type parties.

In November, Webb sold $64 worth of goods to two undercover officers. The police department in Burelson, Texas, charged Webb with violating a law banning the sale of “obscene devices.” Texas law defines an obscene device as an item designed for stimulation of the human genital organs. Adult stores get around the law by offering the goods as “novelties” or “marital aids.” If convicted of the crime, Webb faces a possible $4,000 fine and a one-year jail sentence.

Webb’s business involves hosting parties where women learn about various sex toys. Because women are unlikely to risk the public disapproval of going into an adult business, Webb’s business allows them to see sex toys in the privacy of someone’s home.

Webb’s little business has been successful for her, as she has conducted over 30 parties, with sales averaging $500 per party, according to the Los Angeles Times.

While Webb’s case attracts the national media now, laws like the one in Texas exist in a number of states.

A recent case from Alabama successfully challenged such laws on the same grounds used by the Supreme Court last year to nullify consensual sodomy laws.

The origin of these laws dates back to a time when states wanted to outlaw anything other than sex within a marriage for procreative purposes.

The case from Alabama, Williams v. Pryor, involved efforts by the State of Alabama to charge an adult bookstore with selling “sexual devices.” The store, Decatur Pleasures, features vibrating and non-vibrating sexual aids, which include vibrators. The store offers counseling on the use of these products.

Alabama argued that laws against selling such sex toys serve a legitimate purpose, such as promoting morality.

The court noted that such laws date back to the seventeenth century — the colonial period, when colonists argued that God forbids intercourse outside a marital relation.

Colonial America enforced laws banning adultery, sodomy (both punished as capital crimes), and fornication (the state not only whipped the violators, but forced the couple to marry).

However, the states never prosecuted married people for sex crimes committed within the marriage. Marriage was a complete defense against rape charges.

Wanting to ban all sex outside of marriage, the colonists banned masturbation (also known as “auto-ejaculation”). The theory was that not only was masturbation immoral, but also could cause physical and mental disease. A pamphlet distributed in 1737, “Onania: or, The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences,” proclaimed that masturbation for men caused STDs, fainting fits, epilepsies, loss of erection, and other maladies, while women who masturbated suffered imbecility, hysteric fits, barrenness and total ineptitude.

Despite the absurdity, these myths prevailed for the next two centuries and gave rise to repressive laws.

The invention of the vibrator came about in the 1880s. In treating women unable to achieve orgasms, doctors had to massage them manually, which took some time. Rather than spend so much time doing it with just one’s hands, doctors were relieved when a British doctor invented the electromechanical vibrator in the 1880s.

However, religious leaders worried that the use of such devices by women (let alone men) could lead to an outbreak of masturbation. Rather than outlaw private masturbation, federal and state laws simply made it illegal to sell “articles of immoral use.” Not only did these laws ban vibrators, but also the manufacture of condoms and any other contraceptive device.

In the case from Alabama, a federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of the Alabama statute banning the sale of vibrators. The federal appellate court, relying much on Supreme Court precedents regulating private sex, said that the state had an interest in regulating sexual conduct outside of marriage. But that decision was prior to the Supreme Court’s overturning Bowers v. Hardwick in the recent Lawrence v. Texas, striking down state laws prohibiting private sexual conduct between consenting adults.

The case from Alabama returned to a trial court, which found that, even if Alabama could ban the sale of sex toys, it could not enforce the law against private individuals who use them.

While the law seems rather clear in this area, it’s safe to say that Texas will take the “sex toy” case all the way to the Supreme Court, which may strike down such laws as violating privacy rights.