Free Speech

I'm sure you've all heard the news item by now, but here's the headline that says it all: "Free speech defeats ban on sale of video games". Briefly, the story is that the Supreme Court has struck down a California law that made it a crime to sell violent video games to children. It wasn't even a close vote. The court ruled 7:2. The court made a stunning decision: Make parents responsible for their children. Is there any doubt that our court system (and the nation that supports it) has lost its mind?

I'm fascinated by the "free speech" claim. What "speech" is involved in games of graphic violence, sex, mutilation, criminal behavior, and all that wonderful stuff? What are they "saying"? I've been wondering the same thing when the courts protected pornography on the same basis. What are they saying? What is the "speech" involved here? It is, first of all, lies, to be sure, in both cases. In both cases they're saying, "Doing what we're depicting is fun and entertaining" when the truth is that it is ... well, wrong. But "free speech" is not curtailed on the basis of its truth, or, as the most obvious example, political speeches would be banned. But as dishonest as political speeches may be, at least they're saying something -- making a statement. I cannot fathom what violent video games or pornography in all its extremes can be saying.

I'm fascinated by the inconsistency. It is illegal to sell pornography (remember, "protected free speech") to minors. It is illegal to sell alcohol or cigarettes to minors. Why is it legal (as a mandate of the Supreme Court) to sell violent video games to them? Is it some sort of God-given, inalienable right to be allowed to sell this kind of stuff to children or is it the divine right of children to be able to be sold it? This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. And I'm not saying that the court was right or wrong in this ruling. I'm simply pointing out that the ideas are inconsistent. Ban one, but not the other. On what basis? That was, in fact, the point of the two dissenting judges. Judge Breyer wrote, "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 the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he … binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" I'm wondering the same thing.

However, it's that last point that I find most disturbing. The court has decided to leave the responsibility for regulating this to the parents. I don't find it disturbing that parents are to be responsible for it. I find it disturbing that anyone had to say it in the first place. Since when did it become the requirement of the State to raise children? When did the State become tasked with regulating what children can and can't have? Obviously I don't think that children should have pornographic material (in fact, no one should, but that won't fly any better than Prohibition did), but why is it the job of government to see that our kids don't have violent video games or pornography or cigarettes or beer? The very sad fact is that it became a function of the government when parents abdicated their responsibilities for their children. And, mind you, to a very large part, they have. I mean, for any responsible parent this ruling would have been a yawn. "Yeah, yeah, whatever; we already restrict our kids from that stuff." But the popular view today is that parents should be popular with their children. Their kids should like them. Their kids should be happy and do what they want. In the course of one week I heard from two different Christian sources who said that they didn't feel that it was right to teach their kids Christianity, but that the kids should come to that on their own. Self-professed Christian parents.

Well, I don't know if the court was right in its ruling. It wouldn't much matter if I thought they were wrong. They're not likely to reverse themselves because "We read Stan's blog and decided his opinion was of importance to us." Yeah, I'm not holding my breath there. They were right in calling on parents to be responsible. I'm only sad that it was required that they do so. That should have been a "duh" moment. And I do wish they'd be consistent. And I do wish that someone would figure out what "free speech" really is. I mean, you can't yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater, but we protect the destruction of the moral fiber of our males and the consequent erosion of marriages caused by readily-available pornography? At what point do we limit "free speech"? We do. I just don't know where.