January 3, 2015
Papers Show that Margaret Thatcher Nearly Banned Sex Toys
EDGE READ TIME: 2 MIN.
How to destroy an industry and lose the lesbian vote with one stroke of the pen.
Recent documents released by the United Kingdom's National Archive show that Margaret Thatcher, the anti-union and pro-business former Prime Minister of England nearly destroyed one of the country's more lucrative industries -- sex toys.
Gay Star News reports that news of the Iron Lady's near prohibition of sex toys came amid the annual release of documents from the UK's National Archive, which show that a faction of moral crusaders lobbied for the ban. One of the crusaders was British social conservative activist Mary Whitehouse, who met with the Prime Minister on two occasions.
"Some of the items in circulation are most objectionable, including some which can cause physical injury," said then -Home Secretary Leon Brittan, who wrote to Thatcher saying that there was a strong case for banning sex toys under the existing obscenity laws.
The papers note that Thatcher believed the toys could be barred on the grounds that they offended good taste or public decency.
Plans for the ban were subsequently scrapped.
According to a 2012 report in the Daily Mail, the sex toys business in the United Kingdom was worth �250 million or $388 million USD annually.
A one-woman British precursor to today's One Million Moms, Mary Whitehouse came to national prominence in England in 1973, when she wrote to BBC's director general in objection to a performance of Chuck Berry's song "My Ding-a-ling" on the network's "Top of the Pops" program.
"One teacher," Whitehouse wrote, "told us of how she found a class of small boys with their trousers undone, singing the song and giving it the indecent interpretation which -- in spite of all the hullabaloo -- is so obvious... We trust you will agree with us that it is no part of the function of the BBC to be the vehicle of songs which stimulate this kind of behaviour -- indeed quite the reverse."
