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While your point may or may not be true - I fail to see how this pertains to whether the state should be involved in legislating morality? I feel that if you pi

While your point may or may not be true - I fail to see how this pertains to whether the state should be involved in legislating morality? I feel that if you picked some other moral issue - say gay marriage for instance - the majority of us would be of the opinion that the government has no business telling gays that they can't get married because its "immoral." But on this issue its okay for the government to dictate what's moral because you happen to agree with it? How easily we seem to be willing to trade freedom for comfort when we agree with what's traded. Certainly I wouldn't want a 12 year old's perception of reality to be entirely shaped by video games, but that falls to sound parenting and not the government. That being said - I'm not entirely sure I even agree with your premise, I grew up on Doom, Wolfenstein, etc which were graphically violent for their time and have turned into a successful well rounded "moral" person.

niels_olson 15y ago
I love the number of replies who have claim to be well-rounded "moral" persons. A little bit of selection bias there, eh? Granted I must be victim to the same bias. Thus the anecdote. The point is that if you haven't been faced with the actual situation, a video game can only be a bad substitute.
- thecoffman 15y ago
  Ya, that is why I put it in quotes. Who is to say what truly is moral? I'm sure there are some things which we can universally agree on, but others maybe not so much. Morality is a relative thing. Personally I tend to follow the non-aggression principle which I feel puts me on fairly solid (though not infallible) ethical grounds.
- jra101 15y ago
  Are movies or books an acceptable/good substitute? All this ruling does is give video games the same freedom of speech protection that movies and books have.
fecklessyouth 15y ago
Condensing constitutional law to the question of "legislating morality" is an incredible oversimplification. Of course the government legislates morality. That's why it's illegal to kill someone, make CP, and put certain context in broadcast media. The government is concerned with more than simply reducing social harm, which is often trumpeted as the opposite role of government instead of "legislating morality." The real question is, can the government legislate this morality? How much protection is the legislated-upon action given by the Constitution, and how restrictive is that actual legislation?
- thecoffman 15y ago
  Well this is taking a sharp turn into the legal and philosophical - both arenas in which my knowledge is woefully inadequate - but as I understand it, laws against killing people have nothing to do with morality. You can't kill a person (or make CP) because it infringes upon a certain set of "natural rights" which are supposed to be universal and self evident. There isn't a moral judgement involved. You are committing an criminal act by depriving the murdered/exploited person of their rights regardless of any moral context. Now theoretically you could go a layer deeper and suppose that those natural rights are themselves based on a certain group or culture's morality judgement, although that would be contradictory to their essence as "natural"
  - fecklessyouth 15y ago
    You're right, but there's a sliding scale of rights, which can't be better demonstrated better than in 1A law. The way that the scale, and many other gray areas of rights, is determined, is greatly influenced by morality.
  - gnosis 15y ago
    "laws against killing people have nothing to do with morality. You can't kill a person (or make CP) because it infringes upon a certain set of "natural rights" which are supposed to be universal and self evident." Governments kill people all the time, and do so quite legally. Some governments do it more than others. But, as far as the US government is concerned, it happens to have the one of the world's largest contingent of hired killers. And they spend more money than all of the rest of the world combined to train them to kill and to facilitate killing and on giving them the means to do so. And this doesn't even begin to cover the vast array of other people and situations in which killing is not only permitted, but considered a duty -- from police killing a some suspect trying to get away or resisting arrest to your average homeowner killing an intruder in their home, etc.. So when you talk about "laws against killing", you're really talking about "laws against certain kinds of killing in certain kinds of situations" and also "laws that specifically allow or even require killing in certain situations". While most societies do have laws against "murder", what that usually boils down to is "certain kinds of illegal killing". Precisely what qualifies as "illegal killing" and what in which situations killing is allowed or even encouraged varies from society to society and certainly from individual to individual (take pacifists and believers in non-violence vs soldiers for example).
HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
but that falls to sound parenting and not the government Exactly this. I recently found out that my 10 year-old was viewing online porn on my computer. I didn't go out and start lobbying the government to make porn illegal; instead I sat down with him and had a talk about it without freaking out. The legality of any given act and how I want my kids to consider it are two completely different things. I think violent/sexual video games should be completly legal, but my kids won't be playing them (well, not in this house anyway :-) until I think they're ready.
Seus 15y ago
I agree with this. Not only that, but isn't the whole reason game ratings are on the games, so that parents can know the intended audience for the game without knowing about it? It's the parents responsibility. Plain and simple. More than likely if the parents don't care if the children play it, odds are they're not doing a lot of things as a parent. It's not the responsibility of the government to become parents. Look at the mess they've made trying to do that with other things that obviously don't work, the drug war for instance.

niels_olson 15y ago

I love the number of replies who have claim to be well-rounded "moral" persons. A little bit of selection bias there, eh? Granted I must be victim to the same bias. Thus the anecdote. The point is that if you haven't been faced with the actual situation, a video game can only be a bad substitute.

thecoffman 15y ago
Ya, that is why I put it in quotes. Who is to say what truly is moral? I'm sure there are some things which we can universally agree on, but others maybe not so much. Morality is a relative thing. Personally I tend to follow the non-aggression principle which I feel puts me on fairly solid (though not infallible) ethical grounds.
jra101 15y ago
Are movies or books an acceptable/good substitute? All this ruling does is give video games the same freedom of speech protection that movies and books have.

fecklessyouth 15y ago

Condensing constitutional law to the question of "legislating morality" is an incredible oversimplification. Of course the government legislates morality. That's why it's illegal to kill someone, make CP, and put certain context in broadcast media. The government is concerned with more than simply reducing social harm, which is often trumpeted as the opposite role of government instead of "legislating morality." The real question is, can the government legislate this morality? How much protection is the legislated-upon action given by the Constitution, and how restrictive is that actual legislation?

thecoffman 15y ago
Well this is taking a sharp turn into the legal and philosophical - both arenas in which my knowledge is woefully inadequate - but as I understand it, laws against killing people have nothing to do with morality. You can't kill a person (or make CP) because it infringes upon a certain set of "natural rights" which are supposed to be universal and self evident. There isn't a moral judgement involved. You are committing an criminal act by depriving the murdered/exploited person of their rights regardless of any moral context. Now theoretically you could go a layer deeper and suppose that those natural rights are themselves based on a certain group or culture's morality judgement, although that would be contradictory to their essence as "natural"
- fecklessyouth 15y ago
  You're right, but there's a sliding scale of rights, which can't be better demonstrated better than in 1A law. The way that the scale, and many other gray areas of rights, is determined, is greatly influenced by morality.
- gnosis 15y ago
  "laws against killing people have nothing to do with morality. You can't kill a person (or make CP) because it infringes upon a certain set of "natural rights" which are supposed to be universal and self evident." Governments kill people all the time, and do so quite legally. Some governments do it more than others. But, as far as the US government is concerned, it happens to have the one of the world's largest contingent of hired killers. And they spend more money than all of the rest of the world combined to train them to kill and to facilitate killing and on giving them the means to do so. And this doesn't even begin to cover the vast array of other people and situations in which killing is not only permitted, but considered a duty -- from police killing a some suspect trying to get away or resisting arrest to your average homeowner killing an intruder in their home, etc.. So when you talk about "laws against killing", you're really talking about "laws against certain kinds of killing in certain kinds of situations" and also "laws that specifically allow or even require killing in certain situations". While most societies do have laws against "murder", what that usually boils down to is "certain kinds of illegal killing". Precisely what qualifies as "illegal killing" and what in which situations killing is allowed or even encouraged varies from society to society and certainly from individual to individual (take pacifists and believers in non-violence vs soldiers for example).

HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago

but that falls to sound parenting and not the government Exactly this. I recently found out that my 10 year-old was viewing online porn on my computer. I didn't go out and start lobbying the government to make porn illegal; instead I sat down with him and had a talk about it without freaking out. The legality of any given act and how I want my kids to consider it are two completely different things. I think violent/sexual video games should be completly legal, but my kids won't be playing them (well, not in this house anyway :-) until I think they're ready.

Seus 15y ago

I agree with this. Not only that, but isn't the whole reason game ratings are on the games, so that parents can know the intended audience for the game without knowing about it? It's the parents responsibility. Plain and simple. More than likely if the parents don't care if the children play it, odds are they're not doing a lot of things as a parent. It's not the responsibility of the government to become parents. Look at the mess they've made trying to do that with other things that obviously don't work, the drug war for instance.