Phyllis Schlafly takes on the courts for not treating video games that promote what I call gratuitous violence the same as they treat pornography in regard to minor children:
Extremely violent video games have become the dangerous obsession of a significant portion of our youth, and several towns and states have passed ordinances intended to prevent minors from buying or viewing them. But judicial supremacists are striking down these laws by claiming this extremely graphic violence deserves the same First Amendment protection as Shakespeare.
In March, a three-judge panel for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal unanimously held that violent video games are entitled to as much protection as the Bible. This was the ruling of Entertainment Software Association v. Swanson, even though one of the video games, "Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend," boasts it will enable the user "to hack your enemies to meaty bits!"
Judge Roger L. Wollman, writing for the court, observed that "great literature includes many themes and descriptions of violence. See, e.g., Judges 4:21 (NIV) ('But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to [Sisera] while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground and he died.')." What Wollman failed to add is that a literary description of violence in the Bible does not engage a teenager in role-playing or desensitize him to the harm.
Here is a link to the argument that we should treat pornography and what is called "sadistic violence" the same in regard to the First Amendment as it is applied to minor children:
9. Ordinary experience confirmed by studies conducted around the world has recognized the evil effects of pornography and violence in the media.[5] Pornography in the media is understood as a violation, through the use of audio-visual techniques, of the right to privacy of the human body in its male or female nature, a violation which reduces the human person and human body to an anonymous object of misuse for the purpose of gratifying concupiscence; violence in the media may be understood—especially in this context—as a presentation designed to appeal to base human instincts of actions contrary to the dignity of the person and depicting intense physical force exercised in a deeply offensive and often passionate manner.
Specialists may disagree among themselves about how and to what degree particular individuals and groups are affected by these phenomena, but the broad outlines of the problem are stark, clear and frightening.
10. While no one can consider himself or herself immune to the corrupting effects of pornography and violence or safe from injury at the hands of those acting under their influence, the young and the immature are especially vulnerable and the most likely to be victimized. Pornography and sadistic violence debase sexuality, corrode human relationships, exploit individuals—especially women and young people—undermine marriage and family life, foster anti-social behavior and weaken the moral fiber of society itself.
[ 5. Among those can be cited: 1) "The Longford Report on Pornography," (Original title: "Pornography: The Longford Report"), Ricerche-Mursia, Milan, Italy, 1978; 2) "Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography," Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, Tenn., 1986; 3) ISPES (Instituto di Studi Politici, Economici e Sociali), "I e II Rapporto Sulla Pornografia in Italia," Rome, 1986 and 1988.]
Schlafly gives this argument:
Legitimate free speech expresses violence in a rational context, rather than displaying it graphically to evoke an immediate emotional reaction. It is not a First Amendment right to cause panic on an airplane by shouting that someone has a bomb; nor is it legitimate free speech to evoke violent reactions in children through graphic video games.
A teenager who learns how to murder and mutilate human beings in video games is desensitized to commit heinous crimes against his neighbors. Nothing in the First Amendment should prevent regulations to stop this, supremacist judges to the contrary notwithstanding.
Just to be clear, this is not about banning violent entertainment all together, but simply restricting minors from accessing material that is damaging, just like cigarettes, alcohol, and pornography.
