Taboo sex shop plans to keep selling sexual devices despite tickets from city

The owner of the Taboo sex shop says he will continue to sell off the remaining sexually explicit merchandise at his Devine Street store, even after receiving four more citations from Columbia officials over the past two days.

“The city is not buying into the liquidation sale,” Jeff White told The State newspaper.

City inspectors wrote Taboo the Couples Superstore two tickets on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday, bringing the store’s tally to 11 tickets, White said. Each carries a fine of up to 30 days in jail and $500 per day.

Still, he said, Taboo the Couples Superstore will continue to liquidate its inventory of sexually explicit devices with a buy-one, get-one-free deal it started earlier this month. “I will sell every last sexual device, even if I have to give the last one away for free,” White said.

White has said he believes the sale is legal because Columbia’s zoning ordinance defines a “sexual device shop” as “regularly featuring sexual devices.”

Scott Bergthold, the Chattanooga lawyer hired by Columbia to write and defend its zoning and sex shop law changes, has said the city would enforce its zoning laws. Shortly after Taboo’s legal opening in December 2011, the city rewrote those laws to restrict where sexually oriented businesses could operate.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Taboo sex shop plans to keep selling sexual devices despite tickets from city."