The California law would have imposed $1,000 fines on stores that sold violent video games to people under 18. It defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that was “patently offensive,” appeals to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
The definitions tracked language from decisions upholding laws regulating sexual content. In 1968, in Ginsberg v. New York, the court allowed limits on the distribution to minors of sexual materials like what it called “girlie magazines” that fell well short of obscenity, which is unprotected by the First Amendment.
For or against any kind of limits on what can be shown in video games, or restricting their sales to minors on any grounds, can we all agree that it makes no for the court to rule, in effect, that states can't restrict businesses from selling video games that feature a playable male character inserting a knife into the abdomen of a woman, but the state can restrict the sale of video games that feature a male character inserting his penis into a the vagina of a woman? The former is despicable, the latter is ... well ... ~waggles eyebrows~ birds and the bees and natural as you please.
If I'm missing something or misstating the problem, by all means correct me. As it is, I think we've got some mental defectives/moral monsters sitting on the Supreme Court.