The Sex Police

Rumors spread that an adult bookstore had opened. A group of citizens decided to see for themselves and went on a fact-finding mission, says Virgil Eubanks, an Abilene resident and former pastor who retired in September from the First Christian Church of Abilene. What Eubanks saw inside the interstate superstore was "raw pornography."

Phillip Cosby was a month away from retiring from the U.S. Army. With a 22-year military career ending, Cosby found a second calling as an outspoken anti-pornography crusader. Cosby placed an ad in the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle seeking men to join his battle with the Lion's Den; 140 responded, according to the September issue of KC Business. Cosby and Eubanks formed a coalition of churches, pastors and local residents called Citizens for Strengthening Community Virtues. A two-year legal battle with the Lion's Den and its customers followed.

On November 6, 2003, Cosby and Eubanks returned with the Dickinson County sheriff for a shopping spree at the Lion's Den. Eubanks says the sheriff told them that buying the sex toys and videos "was the best way to collect evidence." According to a February 14, 2004, article in the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle, Dickinson County taxpayers picked up the $1,332.71 tab for 36 items charged to a Sheriff's Office credit card. Among the DVDs and sex toys were black handcuffs for $7.95, a 36-inch whip for $61.95 and an anatomically correct inflatable pig (named Ms. Piglet) for $21.95.

Cosby's group launched "Operation Daniel," a 100-day picket named after the prophet Daniel, who was cast into a den of lions but was spared because of his faith in God. They picketed the Lion's Den in shifts, like striking union members.

Picketers began to target anyone who pulled into the parking lot. They jotted down license-plate numbers from semis and called the trucking companies to out the drivers who had stopped at the sex shop. They called businesses that owned company cars spotted outside the place. They called wives and fami­ly members of locals who shopped there.

Responses to the phone calls were mixed.

"Some companies responded very favorably. And we're glad we called them," Eubanks recalls. "Others didn't seem to care much."

Thanks to the pickets, business at the Lion's Den dropped by 30 percent, and 75 percent of the truckers kept driving, Cosby bragged to Christian newswire AgapePress in January 2004. The Lion's Den declined to comment on Cosby's efforts.

The campaign wasn't about hurting business at the Lion's Den, says the Rev. Mike Keating, pastor of Emanuel United Methodist Church in Abilene, where Cosby was a parishioner. The point, Keating says, was to make the shopping habits of Lion's Den customers known to their friends, family and employers. "Overall, people were appreciative and polite because it was handled in that tone," Keating says.

Meanwhile, Cosby ran for Dickinson County Commissioner on a values campaign. At the height of his celebrity, Cosby finished third out of five candidates in the primary election, receiving 452 votes.

Cosby also petitioned for a grand jury, which found that the Lion's Den sold obscene items, including dildos, strap-on devices and fake vaginas. The charges were thrown out because of a clerical error. But a year later, Dickinson County filed 10 new charges of obscenity against the Lion's Den for selling blow-up dolls, artificial vaginas and an artificial mouth.

Cosby's efforts had a fatal flaw. He relied on a 1986 law that made dildos and artificial vaginas illegal. The law had been thrown out by the Kansas Supreme Court in 1990. In that case, prosecutors had charged Wichita adult-bookstore owner Randy L. Hughes with obscenity for selling undercover cops "The Sexplorer Pleasure System," a vibrator kit with a dildo attachment, and "Miss World," an inflatable doll with an artificial vagina. The high court declared the statute unconstitutional because "the Legislature may not declare a device obscene merely because it relates to human sexual activity."

Because the Kansas Legislature hadn't rewritten the unconstitutional portion of the statute, District Court Judge Robert D. Innes had no choice but to throw out the case against the Lion's Den.

Cosby didn't think of the cases as failures. "If you look at the big picture with what's happening in Kansas in general, the event in Dickinson County is a spark that has gone off across Kansas," Cosby told the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle. "Nothing is in vain."

At the Lion's Den, a final, silent protest remains. A billboard on westbound I-70 reads: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Pornography destroys families." On the back side, it continues: "Jesus heals and restores. Pornography destroys."

Inside the Lion's Den, Ms. Piglet, the inflatable pig doll purchased by the county as part of Cosby's campaign, sits on a shelf like a victory trophy.

But Cosby is long gone.