All over the country, people like Jack Thompson are trying to take away your right to play violent video games. They don’t like that you enjoy oral copulation from prostitutes followed by vicious assault with a baseball bat, and they feel it’s their job to legally keep you from it, even if it’s in a fictional world.
The trials and tribulations of what has gone on in Louisiana could prove to be a hotbed of legal precedents in dealing with video games in the future, and the long story of this case can be found after the jump.
Last year, Mr. Jack Thompson (read: the bad guy) was the author of a law in Lousiana courts that sought to “criminalize the sale, lease or rental of video or computer games that appeal to a minor’s morbid interest in violence”. While the Governor of Louisiana (read: kind of an idiot) signed it into law, the ESA (read: the good guys) filed for an injunction against it, saying that the law was both unconstitutional and kinda nutso.
As it turns out, Federal Judge James Brady agrees with the ESA. He found that the idea of a law that criminalizes the sale of items, such as games, even if it is to minors, violates the First Amendment. As you know, the First Amendment is one of our better Amendments and for Mr. Thompson (read: Insane Jackass) to want to go against it, he’s going to see a lot of legal opposition from judges, activists, and, of course, Destructoid.
While this takes care of the issue in Louisiana, it doesn’t stop such laws from being introduced throughout the country. Of course, this ruling gives defendants a firm legal footing on which to legally call Mr. Thompson (read: white-haired monkey’s asshole) a jackass, and that’s a step in the right direction.
One must begin to wonder about the root of this problem though. While it’s true that people like Jack Thompson (read: I’m out of witty insults, sorry), and Senator Lieberman have made political careers entirely on persecuting gamers, they must actually have supporters, or they wouldn’t have the kind of clout that they have. Our culture has been on a downward spiral due to the negligence of parents for quite some time and when adults would rather have our government inact laws, rather than having to discipline their children and teaching them the difference between fantasy and reality, people like Jack (read: This is fucking hard! You wanna try to come up with insults for this douchebag?) will be able to parade around in front of the soccer moms and the grandparents claiming that video games are the new Nazi movement and that Robert Summa (read: NOT the new Joseph Goebbels) is the new Joseph Goebbels.
It’s easy to claim that Mr. Thompson (read: Fuck this. Entertain yourselves you lazy bitches.) is a blight on our society, but the real problem starts at home. Educate your family members, your parishioners and that MILF whose skirt you keep trying to look up. They need to know that the problems that video games might be responsible for pale in comparison to letting some rich white guy wipe his ass with our Constitution, and that if we all don’t do something, we’ll be losing freedoms faster than a naked Arab in Abu Ghraib (read: See? I can do topical humor too!).
