Porn Valley – Joanne Webb, the Texas housewife who was busted in November for selling dildos, was profiled Thursday night on ABC’s PrimeTime Thursday. Webb works for a company called Passion Parties which employs, nationally, 3,000 female sales reps and hauls in about $20 million a year by organizing the equivalent of Tupperware parties in customers’ homes. The typical customer for the company’s line of sex products is in her early 30’s.

The company is owned by Pat Davis. [One wonders if Davis is kicking in for Webb’s legal fees]. Davis says it better to have the sex products shown in the comfort of a customer’s home, because “it offers education, it offers comfort, it offers confidentiality and it’s a great way for women to get together to have a giggle and have a girl’s night out.”

Webb, who works in Burleson, Texas, just south of Fort Worth, says she chose to sell sexual aids over Tupperware or cosmetics because it was new, exciting and could help keep couples together.

“I thought, you know, if I could educate women on how to get the most out of their sensuality, how to give the most in their relationships through their sensuality, maybe, just maybe some of these divorce rates would go down,” she told ABC.

Webb says she wasn’t surprised when women at her parties began to confide in her about the problems they’d been having.

She talked about one 26-year-old customer who had been married for five years and was in the middle of a divorce. Webb said the woman told her she had never had an orgasm in the five years she was married; she didn’t even know what her clitoris was. “She looked at me and she said, ‘You know, if I had known these things before I probably wouldn’t be in the middle of the divorce right now,’ ” Webb said.

Webb began working with “Passion Parties” last summer, and her part-time job brings in between $500 and $1,000 a month. On Nov. 13, 2003, the Burleson Police left a voicemail on her cell phone saying that a warrant had been issued for her arrest on an obscenity charge.

Webb, a one-time Bible School teacher, was charged and booked under a Texas law that defines an obscene device as one designed to be used for sexual stimulation. Webb’s attorney BeAnn Sisemore, a veteran of the civil right’s movement, points out that there are shops in Texas that sell sexual devices, but aren’t breaking the law because they call the devices a novelty or a gift item.

Sisemore, interprets Texas law as saying you can either sell the devices, or you can explain what to do with them, but you can’t do both. If the law were strictly interpreted, Sisemore says it could also be used against businesses that sell condoms and don’t label them novelties.

“Wal-Mart everyday sells condoms. They’re ribbed condoms, for his pleasure and her pleasure. If it is used in any manner to affect the human genitalia then it falls under the statute,” Sisemore told ABC. Sisemore says she has never been so emotionally involved in a case.

“Would I have been so brave?” Sisemore said. “It takes people like this to make people like me comfortable about their sexuality and themselves as a person. I feel a huge sense of responsibility.”

Typically, local officials, including country attorney Bill Moore who brought the charges, declined a request for an interview.

If convicted, Webb could be fined up to $4,000 and spend up to a year in prison.

“My middle daughter, she won’t even discuss this issue with her friends because it scares her so much,” Webb said said. “It’s the idea of her mom going to jail that really scares her.”

On the other hand, Webb continues to conduct her Passion Parties as a cause. “I will continue to help women. That is my plan,” she said.