Woman's sex toy parties incur the wrath of Texas
Joanne Webb does not immediately come across as a menace to society. She is a 43-year-old happily married housewife who runs her own business in a small town near Dallas.

Recently, though, the authorities in Cleburne, Texas, learned exactly what it was she did for a living - selling vibrators, gels, lubricants and nipple creams at confidential Tupperware-style parties - and decided she had to be stopped at all costs.

Two undercover narcotics investigatorsapproached Ms Webb to purchase a vibrator and she was hauled into court on an obscure state obscenity law banning the sale of items "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs".

Facing a year in prison and a $4,000 (£2,180) fine if convicted, Ms Webb has now become a legal cause célèbre. "We have a real problem with drugs in our schools," Ms Webb marvelled, "and they're using our narcotics officers to entrap me for selling a vibrator".

Sex toy parties are all the rage across the United States, largely thanks to the California-based company that Ms Webb represents, called Passion Parties. She, like an estimated 3,000 other women, sets up discreet private events to push the company's product line and earning a living from the sales commissions.

Ms Webb's lawyers hope to have her case thrown out on constitutional grounds.

publishes 22 January 2004 at Independent.co.uk; also see ABC News