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? What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restrict-ing sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman-bound, gagged, tortured, and killed-is also topless?
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? What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restrict-ing sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman-bound, gagged, tortured, and killed-is also topless?
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Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in today’s Supreme Court decision that overturned a California law forbidding the sale of violent video games to minors.
While I’m generally a fan of anything that strengthens the protections of the First Amendment, this decision strikes me as funny. On the one hand, everything I know about the case (which is admittedly little) suggests that the California law was overly broad and treated video games as somehow different from other forms of speech. On the other, the court seems to be making a pretty arbitrary distinction between sex and violence. Why are violent video games protected but porn not?
