[All (and more) sold in some Bourbon Street shops.]

John Lynch Cox News Service Nov. 22, 2002 12:00 AM

WHITE OAK, Texas - A woman who sells sex toys has been charged with felony obscenity after White Oak police found some of her wares in her car during a traffic stop earlier this week.

The arrest report describes the 17 items as "obscene materials and obscene devices," but Police Chief Charlie Smith said the items were mostly lotions and objects defined in a dictionary as having the shape and often the appearance of the male genitalia, used in sexual stimulation.

How illegal is that? Prosecutors will have to decide when White Oak investigators forward their findings to the District Attorney's Office sometime in the next week, Smith said.

Kathleen Elizabeth "Kathy" Grubbs, a distributor for the national company Slumber Parties Inc., calls the charge, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail, "kind of ridiculous."

State law appears a little less forgiving: It's illegal to "wholesale promote" obscene materials or devices. Texas statute says an obscene device is a simulated sexual organ or an item designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs. The law allows investigators to assume that anyone with six or more of the items is intending to promote them.

Grubbs, 47, said she has been selling the items for about two months as a distributor for Slumber Parties, a national sex toy party business that operates out of Ohio and Louisiana.

Slumber Parties is where the "Tupperware party meets Victoria's Secret," the company says on its Web site. The distributors host women-only parties in private homes to show off their merchandise.

"Believe it or not, there's a lot of women who go to these parties," Grubbs said.

Company officials did not return a call Wednesday, but Slumber Parties says sales this year are expected to reach $20 million.

The seizure of the items took place during a traffic stop at 10:27 p.m. Monday. Police stopped Grubbs' truck after seeing her driving erratically, an arrest report said. She was charged with driving while intoxicated, and a breath test showed she had blood-alcohol levels of 0.228 percent and 0.22 percent, the report said.

Police searching her truck after the arrest found the box of erotic items. The White Oak police chief said investigators are used to finding drugs and guns, but sex toys are a first in his 22 years of experience.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2002

Answers

the chief maybe should check his wife's underwear drawer?

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2002

Only six? I stashed more than that before rollover. . .

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2002

How do you know that's where women keep them? LOLOLOLOL!

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2002