Here’s an interesting exercise. See if you have an answer for Justice Breyer who, along with Clarence Thomas, dissented from the 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that says that companies can sell extremely violent video games to your kids without your knowledge or consent.
Breyer filed a dissenting opinion arguing it makes no sense to restrict sales of pornography but allow kids to play games that depict graphic violence.
“But what sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?” Breyer said.
“What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured and killed — is also topless?”
You wont find many people who are more First Amendment absolutists than me, but I’ve got a problem with treating brutally violent and misogynistic video games like books. I also think it’s a mistake to treat exposure to sex as worse than exposure to violence. Maybe both should be legal, but violence should be banned before sex.
Then again, this is America.
