Spencer Gifts Tagged for Selling Sex Toys in Mall
by AFA Journal
October 18, 2004
(AgapePress) - The Tupelo Police Department in northeast Mississippi recently charged a Spencer Gifts clerk with the distribution of unlawful sexual devices. The efforts that led to the police action were initiated by the locally-based American Family Association.Spencer Gifts is a novelty store that caters to a younger clientele and specializes in the sale of gothic clothing, posters, toys and gag gifts for teens and adults, as well as items of a sexual nature.
While the majority of these items are legal to sell, the state of Mississippi forbids a person to knowingly sell, advertise, publish, or exhibit "to any person any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs ...."
After sending an undercover agent into the mall store to purchase one of the sexual devices, local law enforcement officers found the clerk in violation of the state law. Following the sale, officers went into the store and seized approximately $2,000 worth of illegal merchandise. According to a police department spokesman, the merchandise was in public view.
Joe Murray of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy said the maximum penalty for violating the law is a fine of $5,000 and six months imprisonment.
He also noted that Mississippi is not the only state with laws that regulate the sale of sexual devices -- Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas have similar laws.
Spencer Gifts, which is owned by Gordon Brothers Group, is located in all of those states -- and has a total of 660 stores throughout the U.S. and 27 in Canada. Spencer's also has a partnership with Playboy magazine, according to www.wordIQ.com.
"We encourage citizens who live in any communities with Spencer stores to check their state and local laws, and then check to see if the stores are selling these products," Murray said. "A lot of children, preteens and teenagers wander through the malls. This is garbage these kids don't need to see, let alone purchase."
This article appeared in the October 2004 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
