"Audemus jura nostra defendere" has been translated as: "We Dare Maintain Our Rights" or "We Dare Defend Our Rights." This Latin phrase is on the state coat of arms completed in 1923.

According to a Birmingham News-Age Herald article by Marie Bankhead Owen (the director of the state Archives) dated April 23, 1939, she came upon the idea while searching for "a phrase that would interpret the spirit of our peoples in a terse and energetic sentence." A part of a poem entitled "What Constitutes a State?" by the 18th-century author Sir William Jones found in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations includes the stanza "Men who their duties know. But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain." The motto was translated into Latin by Professor W. B. Saffold, of the University of Alabama.

San Francisco, CA -- October 3, 2002 -- An Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys was struck down this month by a federal judge as a violation of the right to privacy. "The fundamental right of privacy, long recognized by the Supreme Court as inherent among our constitutional protections, incorporates a right to sexual privacy," said U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Jr.

To celebrate this triumphant occasion, legendary San Francisco-based sex toy store Good Vibrations has re-named a popular bright red personal massager "The Alabama Slammer." Sex toy-starved Alabama residents can reclaim their right to own vibrators, dildos and other adult products by purchasing the vibrant red Alabama Slammer -- or any other Good Vibrations merchandise -- at a 15% discount during the month of November.

For the last four years Good Vibrations has supported the American Civil Liberties Union case against the Alabama sex toy ban. The 1998 law -- part of a package of legislation strengthening the state's obscenity law -- banned the sale of devices designed for "the stimulation of human genital organs."

In 2000, as part of an effort to raise awareness around the Alabama legislation, Good Vibrations collected an emergency supply of sex toys and collected nearly $10,000 worth of product from generous vendors to distribute to the unfortunate, toy-less masses in Alabama.

Good Vibrations, the "clean well-lighted place to buy sex toys," supports every person's right to sexual pleasure. Throughout the ban Good Vibrations argued that sex toys are not obscene and sexual gratification is indeed a basic human right.

As Good Vibrations Sexologist and author Dr. Carol Queen says, "Alabama may have maintained that 'there is no fundamental right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm,' but we strongly disagree, and have for the last four years. What exactly do they think the constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness means?"

The Alabama House voted against a bill Tuesday that would have removed a ban on sexual devices, such as vibrators, from the state's obscenity law. ....

A federal district judge in Birmingham has twice ruled that the ban is unconstitutional. The first ruling was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the second ruling has been appealed to the appeals court.

... The sponsor of the bill, Rep. John Rogers, D-Birmingham, said because of the court ruling, the obscenity law is unenforceable as long as it contains the ban on sex toys....

With little serious discussion, the House voted 37-28 to leave the sex toys ban in state law, leaving Rogers standing at the microphone shaking his head. "What you just did is make our obscenity law illegal. You voted for obscenity,'' Rogers shouted at lawmakers.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 state law banning the sale of sex toys in Alabama, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state has a right to police the sale of devices including electronic vibrators and other products meant to stimulate the sex organs.

"If the people of Alabama in time decide that a prohibition on sex toys is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly, they can repeal the law and be finished with the matter," the court said. "On the other hand, if we today craft a new fundamental right by which to invalidate the law, we would be bound to give that right full force and effect in all future cases including, for example, those involving adult incest, prostitution, obscenity, and the like."

Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett disagreed, writing that the decision was based on the "erroneous foundation" that adults don't have a right to consensual sexual intimacy and that private acts can be made a crime in the name of promoting "public morality."

"This case is not, as the majority's demeaning and dismissive analysis suggests, about sex or about sexual devices. It is about the tradition of American citizens from the inception of our democracy to value the constitutionally protected right to be left alone in the privacy of their bedrooms and personal relationships," Barkett wrote in her dissent.