Sometimes, getting the shaft is a desirable thing. In fact, many folks will pay good money to get it. That’s why our Hero this month is the U.S. Fifth District Court of Appeals for overturning a Texas statute that outlawed the sale of sex toys.

Before the court’s decision, dildos couldn’t be sold in the Lone Star State. Instead, they could only run for public office.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the 35-year-old law outlawing the promotion or sale of obscene devices violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment. Under the law, violators faced up to two years in jail.

The appeals court’s pronouncement heralds the end of the era of exclusively organic penes in Texas. Cowgirls are finally free to purchase strap-ons, thus enabling them to ride like a cowboy. Additionally, bananas, cucumbers, and eggplants (everything’s bigger in Texas) can now be used solely for nutritional purposes via insertion into the orifices for which they were intended.

The parent companies of Dreamer’s and Le Rouge Boutique, along with the retail distributor Adam & Eve, filed suit in federal court in 2004 over the constitutionality of the restriction. They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the case on grounds that the Constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such goods.

In its decision, the appeals court cited Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 opinion that struck down the state’s sodomy law. “Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct,” the judges wrote. “The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct.

“An individual who wants to legally use a safe sexual device during private intimate moments alone or with another is unable to legally purchase a device in Texas, which heavily burdens a constitutional right,” the court continued. “Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices, government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution.”

The court’s ruling essentially leaves Alabama as the only state in the union with a similar obscene-devices prohibition. You needn’t feel completely sorry for Alabama residents, though. While retailers may not legally carry phalli, they still have Nick Saban.