I used to play over 30 hours of video games per week, so as a former gamer, the recent Supreme Court decision overturning a California ban on violent video games on free-speech grounds makes me happy.  I’m predisposed to supporting a maligned and misunderstood industry.  However, it is how  the industry won that is deeply disturbing.

The defense compared the restricting of children’s exposure to violence in video games to the legal restriction of exposure to sexual images.  In his thought-provoking essay on Justice Antonin Scalia’s written argument for the majority, Robert Scheer reveals Justice’s Scalia’s opinion is based on two ideas:

1. violence is ingrained and acceptable to the people of this country and
2. there is a similarly ingrained objection to sexual images.

He seems to bend precedent to imply that in free speech cases, only sexual content may be restricted.  There are many reasons one should find fault with Justice Scalia’s primary argument, but for Christians there should be one most glaring problem: Jesus consistently condemns the Pharisees’ obsession with personal ethics over acts of violence.  Jesus not only condemns violence, but extends it to systemic violence and that is of greater importance than worrying about other people’s purity.

In the example of the widow and her son, Jesus shows his compassion for the one who is failed by a system written (ostensibly) to help her.  In the 1^st Century Judaic culture, widows were given favored status and laws were written to give them extra protection—particularly in their time of vulnerability (affirmative action?).  And yet, these women could still fall through the cracks into abject poverty.  Jesus rejects the belief that these laws were ‘the best they could do’ and rejects a system that does violence to her because of who she is (and isn’t).

Time and time again, Jesus rejects the placement of personal morality over the protection of the weak and disenfranchised.  From the parable of the Good Samaritan to the healings on the Sabbath, Jesus sees oppressive morality as a graver sin than almost any other.

In light of this, I can’t see the decision to maintain the restriction of a child’s access to sexual materials while overturning such a restriction to violent materials.  It seems to track as the opposite of Jesus’s direction to his followers.  I’m not saying Jesus likes porn or would want children to be exposed to it, but He seems to argue that we are wrong to obsess about sex and not violence.  He also seems to argue that violence is a graver concern than sexual ethics.  Full stop.

It all comes down to this, however.  As a Christian and a father, I reject that the ingrained violence in our culture is given privilege in the courts.  Free speech is not about freedom to promote violence, but instead, peace.  We are called to help GOD transform this world into something new and different—a world of peace and justice.  This decision is one more obstacle for that transformation.