The U.S. Supreme Court, by a 7-2 vote, recently decided California could not ban the sale of violent video games to minors,  but they could deny sale of  material with sexual content to minors and adults. In other words, the Court ruled in favor of violence over sex.

According to Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority:

“the obscenity exception to the First Amendment does not cover whatever a legislature finds shocking, but only depictions of ‘sexual conduct’ …violence is not part of the obscenity that the Constitution permits to be regulated.”

 More logical was Justice Steven Breyer, writing in dissent:

“But 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 restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured, and killed — is also topless?”

Good questions indeed.