PARIS — A sex toy shop owner was found guilty of peddling porn today by a French court for selling his novelties within 200 yards of a school.
The controversial “Love Shop” case came to light earlier this month when two Christian groups — the National Confederation of Catholic Family Associations (CNAFC) and the CLER Love and Family Association complained that shop manager Nicolas Busnel was pushing porn.
Busnel said he sold dildos and vibrators but said that they shouldn't be considered porn.
He maintained that limiting sex toy shops to areas outside of 200 yards of educational institutions would mean the only places they could be sold would be "cemeteries, parks and on train tracks."
But the court disagreed and found Busnel had violated porn laws because his central Paris shop was only 100 yards from a local elementary school.
The good news for the shop owner was that the court only ordered him to pay $1.33 in damages to the associations as a symbolic sign. He reportedly had faced up to two years in prison and a $40,000 fine under France’s anti-porn law.
Busnel’s lawyer, Richard Malka, previously stated, "There are as many definitions of pornography as there are people,” and denounced the guilty verdict as "the most retrograde morality and the most worrying puritanism."
"France is today the only country in the Western world to consider a vibrating duck as a pornographic object," Malka said.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Henri de Beauregard, said he was "satisfied that the law has been applied."
