Justice in anti-goth hate crime?

Melody McDermott (left) and the man who attacked her, Kenneth Kelsall (right), outside the UK courthouse where Kelsall was convicted.

Goths worldwide celebrated World Goth Day this week. But another, more bittersweet, victory came today with the news that Kenneth Kelsall has pleaded guilty to the vicious assault on Melody McDermott last October. The 47-year-old UK man and his accomplice, Gareth Farrar, will be sentenced in July.

Much of the case revolved around security footage of the attack. According to attorneys, it began when Kelsall head-butted McDermott, knocking her to the ground of the tram they were riding. McDermott began kicking at the tram doors for help. Farrar pushed McDermott into a corner of the tram. He then turned to McDermott’s companion, Stephen Stafford, and punched him to the ground. Stafford was kicked in the face, sustaining an injury that required stitches. Somewhere in the attack, Kelsall kicked McDermott in the head numerous times, breaking her eye socket. Needless to say, the attack could have been fatal if it had continued.

Farrar’s attorney actually told the court, “He can be seen swinging two punches against the complainant. But he is a man of 43 and effectively good character.” (I’m not sure you can attack a girl half your age, just because you don’t like her looks, and still be of “good character.”)

Although the Daily Mail called the attack a “hate crime,” it was not and could not be prosecuted as such — subcultures such as goth culture are not protected under the UK’s hate-crime laws, despite efforts to gain such protections.

There’s no word yet on the sentences Kelsall and Farrar would face. The Mail said it would be “lengthy,” but quotes Judge Elliot Knopf as saying “they could both face jail sentences.”

Whatever happens, I want to cheer McDermott for bringing charges against her attackers, facing them in court, and doing her part to make sure they face the consequences. It remains to be seen what those consequences will be — and whether they will teach these men not to brutalize others.

Goth, metalhead beaten in separate UK attacks

Ben Moores, left, and Gena Willenberg, right, were recently beaten in separate incidents in the UK — because of how they look.

When emo and heavy metal fans are stoned to death in Iraq, it’s easier to dismiss it as something that happens “over there.”

But in recent weeks, two people have been brutally attacked in separate incidents in the UK, revealing that violent mob behavior is still happening right here.

Gena Willenberg, an American expat, was surrounded by a gang of teenagers in Edinburgh, Scotland, in late March. First came the verbal abuse: “They started shouting at me and my friend that we were f****** goths and they were going to kick our f****** heads in,” she said.

Then the physical assault began.

“We turned our back and just kept going and that was when they attacked me. One of them tried to smash a bottle over the back of my head, but fortunately it didn’t break. Then they started punching and kicking me.

“I fell to the ground and they just kept on kicking me. My friend tried to stop them from stamping on me and they attacked her, too.

“There was one girl in the group and she pulled my hair back so one of her friends could kick me in the face.”

Goths have not fared well in recent years in the UK, with attacks on Melody McDermott and Sophie Lancaster, the latter of whom died of her injuries.

Not far from where Lancaster was attacked in a Bacup, England, park, metalhead Ben Moores was recently beaten in a similar incident. The 16-year-old was was called “mosher” and “freak” as he was punched and kicked to the ground by up to 15 people behind a Co-op supermarket in Waterfoot, 2 miles from Bacup.

Moores recalls:

Clumps of his hair were pulled out and his head and wrists were stamped on. He suffered bruising to his head and body but escaped serious injury.

“When they got me on the floor I thought I was going to die. There was no stopping them – they wouldn’t let me up. I had blood all over my face by the end. When I was getting kicked and stamped in my head and on my wrists and my hair was being pulled out, there was nothing I could do. Thinking about it now makes me shiver in shock. They were only doing it because of the way I look and because I’ve got long hair and like heavy metal music.”

Seven of his attackers are currently in jail.

There are some ways to fight this. If you see a group going after an individual for the way they dress, it might not be best to get involved — but calling the police is a good idea. Walking a goth or metalhead friend home can help keep attackers at bay.

On a more meta level, you can support the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, which has a number of campaigns working to end discrimination and violence against subcultures in the UK.

Fear leads to anger — and goth-bashing

Thirteen-year-old Casey-Lyanne Kearney was stabbed to death. Her accused killer has been called a “goth.” Not likely.

On Valentine’s Day, Casey-Lynne Kearney was crossing Elmfield Park in Doncaster, England when a woman allegedly stabbed her and left her to die.

Police, who called the assault random and isolated, arrested 26-year-old Hannah Bonser, a Doncaster resident, for Kearney’s murder and and for possession of two knives. Her trial is scheduled to begin July 2.

Even before Bonser appeared in court to defend herself, neighbors described her to the UK’s sensationalism-prone Sun as a goth:

… neighbours in Doncaster described her as having the look of “a Goth” — sporting dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses. She was said to be “addicted” to computer games.

One resident, who asked not to be identified, said: “The police were round here and they took some boxes of stuff from her flat. She was like a rocker, gothic type. She was very quiet.”

Talking to the neighbors is one of the oldest tricks in the reporter’s book. There are a variety of good reasons for this practice, but what neighbors say must always be taken with a grain of salt — these days, many people don’t know their neighbors particularly well, or may even have conflicts with them that drive them to say things they shouldn’t.

Not only are those descriptions very vague and patched-together, they don’t really describe an actual goth. (And, you can see in the court link, Bonser doesn’t look particularly goth.) Most of the time, it takes more than dark hair and “dark-rimmed glasses” to identify a goth. (Also, nice how the slipped in the “video games” angle too, eh?”)

More than that, though, these flimsy descriptions reinforce the false idea that goths are a remotely violent group. This idea, popularized after the Columbine High School killings in Colorado in 1999 (committed by two young men who were also falsely identified as goths), has been tough to shake. People outside the goth culture see the black hair, theatrical makeup and clothing, piercings and studs, and assume their fear of such an off-putting appearance must mean goths are aggressive. In fact, the most aggressive thing about goths is probably their appearance. Religioustolerance.org notes, “Goths tend to be non-violent, pacifistic, passive, and tolerant.”

Often to a fault. In fact, goths are much more often the victims of violence, as in the cases of Sophie Lancaster and Melody McDowell, both of whom were coincidentally assaulted in England.

In some ways, the comments made by Bonser’s neighbors constitute another kind of attack on goths — and reveal the layers of misunderstanding and discomfort that exist against them in modern society.

When someone on UK Yahoo Answers asked why goths are so stigmatized, another responded:

Unfortunately a lot of people (especially those who live in small towns & don’t have a lot of life experience, or even those of a low level of intelligence) will always feel threatened by something that is outside their own experience and/or they do not understand.

Or, to quote a certain wise green muppet, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

When will we stop being so afraid of one another?

How fundamentalists control the story

Dawn Jewell’s horse, Erik, was slaughtered in Cornwall last weekend. Probably not by Satanists.

Satanic fervor has overtaken both British newspapers and Internet forums following the death of a 2-year-old stallion last weekend. Details of the death have been scarce, stoking public imagination. Because he died either late Sunday night, Jan. 8, or early Jan. 9, on the full moon (Jan. 9) and close to the supposed Satanic holiday of “St Winebald Day” (Jan. 7), speculators believe the horse’s death must somehow be related to Satanists or the occult.

BBC’s first article played up the “St Winebald” idea. Other, more predictable British papers, took it even further. “Eric the horse mutilated on ‘Satan sacrifice day’,” screeched the Sun, which also shared a few gruesome details. Their piece also contains this potentially libelous gem:

Rumours are rife among locals that the butchery in Stithians, near Falmouth, Cornwall, was part of an evil occult ceremony.

The Daily Mail, meanwhile, has attempted to connect Erik’s fate to a second horse’s death nearly 300 miles away, in Wales.

However, in a followup story, the BBC has toned down the Satanism:

Some internet forums have contained speculation that the most recent killing coincided with St Winebald Day on 7 January, which is said to have been included on Satanic calendars as a date for blood rituals.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police said: “We’re keeping an open mind with many lines of inquiry as to what happened. There is nothing specific to suggest that this is the case, there are no facts, it’s speculation.

“It was a savage attack on or near a date, but there is nothing to suggest that it is things like a Satanic worship attack.”

Worrisomely, if you look up “St. Winebald’s Day” on Google, the first link you come to is one from The Forbidden Knowledge, which presents a “Satanic” calendar without sources or explanation. Click through to the front page of this site and you’ll see an above-the-fold warning that, “Your government is poised to inject you with a tracking chip manufactured by Applied Digital Solutions called, ‘Veri Chip.’ Don’t believe me? Click below, I’ll prove it to you.” Reporters who visit this site should be backing away, as quickly as they can, from any information it contains.

However, the second link with information about this “holiday” is a piece by pagan leader and former cop Kerr Cuhulain debunking the aforementioned calendar. He believes the source is the Calvary Chapel, a fundamentalist Christian organization, based in West Covina, California. In other words, not exactly experts on occult and Satanism — in fact, they have a vested interest in making such faiths look bad.

Cuhulain explains:

This calendar claims that Satanic groups perform between 4 and 8 human sacrifices (“blood” or “Da Muer” rituals) per year. It also claims that every year these groups must engage in 10 sexual orgies with males and females between the ages of 1 and 25 as well as with animals. Let’s look at this awful calendar in detail:

“DATE: Jan. 7, CELEBRATION: St. Winebald Day, TYPE: Blood, USAGE: Animal or Human Sacrifice, AGE: 15-33.”(5)

NOTE: January 7 is Sekhmet, the ancient Egyptian New Year’s Day. It is not a Satanic holiday. Winebald was the brother of Saint Walburga, also known as Walpurgis.

Reporters, or even Internet speculators, don’t seem to have gotten as far as link #2. Or even questioning link #1.

Regular readers of this blog already know that Most Satanists do not practice animal sacrifice. That’s not to say that people playing at “devil worship” won’t hurt animals. It just means it likely has nothing to do with established faiths or the people who follow them.

In short, a calendar cooked up by evangelicals is being used by some police, locals, and even British newspapers to explain a horse’s death — one even going so far as to finger a butcher shop and accuse workers both of horse slaughter and occult activity. Meanwhile, Satanists and occultists who actually follow their faith and their laws are quietly implicated.

Next, people will be believing that the government wants to put a chip in their brain.

Bloody bath lands Lady Gaga in hot water

Lady Gaga has been known to frolic in blood. Does that make her a Satanist? A London hotel housekeeper seems to think so.

A housekeeper at a London hotel is reporting that Lady Gaga recently bathed in a tub full of blood in the hotel — and then didn’t clean up afterward. According to several reports, the housekeeping staff — who, of course, are widely accepted experts on such things — claim it was part of a “Satanic ritual.”

Oh boy.

Let’s revisit history, shall we? The most famous woman alleged to have bathed in blood was Elizabeth Báthory, whose life (like Gaga’s) is so surrounded by myth and hyperbole, it’s hard to know fact from fiction. However, allegedly, Báthory figured out that bathing in the blood of virgins helped her look younger. Is there any evidence that the occult was involved? No.

Bathing in blood is also a pop-culture trope, seen in such films as (pictures not safe for work) Hostel II and (of course) Bathory. Eminem posed in a bathtub full of blood. Did anyone call him a Satanist? Well, okay, yes, but not specifically for his bathing habits.

While it’s true that blood magic is practiced in some pagan faiths, it’s not any more common among Satanists than other groups — and there are no known “Satanic rituals” that involve bathing in blood. Moreover, there’s no sign that this was real blood, or that Lady Gaga is a practicing Satanist.

It seems much more likely that the housekeeper in question, understandably horrified at the scene and justifiably angry at having to clean up, jumped to conclusions based on pop-culture references and her imagination took over.

Let’s keep this in mind the next time we see someone we think might be involved with paganism, the occult, or even Satanism. Those who do practice blood magic probably don’t look like you imagine they would.

Worldwide TV goes on a witch hunt

Lebanese promoter Elia Mssawir talks with a religious leader on Malik Maktabi’s television show, where the host attempted to paint heavy-metal music as occult and Satanic.

Across the world right now, the crackdown on oogedy-boogedy Satanic/occult ideas continues. Maybe it’s because it’s the height of the holiday season, but this has not been a good time for minority faiths — or those who love heavy-metal music.

Earlier this month, Lebanese TV host Malik Maktabi — a personality in the Jerry Springer mold — arranged an hour-long program on the evils of heavy metal. The program featured religious leaders, metal fan Kamal Khoueiry, and Lebanese music agent/promoter Elia Mssawir. Since the program itself isn’t in English, I wasn’t able to make much sense of it. Fortunately, Elia shared some thoughts on the episode on his blog:

Going up on that show was for many reasons and few of them were simple: It’s either I go with my friend Kamal Khoueiry or they will choose some random kid that would claim he’s a metal head and screw up everything we have been trying to fix for ages. Another reason was to defend and fix the image of Metal Heads and that there is no link between metal music and Satanism, which is something many tried to do before us in the past 15 years.

Regular readers may recall that Lebanon is one of the countries that has repeatedly arrested heavy-metal fans — a fate that Mssawir narrowly escaped. For them to go on public television at all is a risk, but one he felt was worth taking. He writes:

We made our thoughts and ideas get delivered in a way for the people to understand that metal is not linked to any Satanic rituals or any fuck ups you might think of; You might disagree with me here but after the calls and messages that i got from parents to thank me in helping them understand what their kids are listening to.

That’s a relief — that, even in the effort to frighten parents, the message got through that heavy metal is safe for kids to hear. But in other countries, a crackdown on “occult” practices — particularly on television — continues.

In Britain, Ofcom, which regulates broadcast communications, has banned the sale of occult services on television. In addition, the new rules outline how everything from chicken bones to astrology may be used on the air.

The media regulator said personalised astrology, horoscopes and tarot card readings were only acceptable if they were clearly labelled as “entertainment” and must never predict specific events, such as births, deaths, marriages – or new jobs.

Oh, and bad news should never be delivered on such programs, Ofcom said.

Similarly, India has enacted an outright ban on “occult” programming: “Many civil society organizations and media critics have alleged that such programmes promote irrationality and hinder the development of a scientific temper.” Broadcasters who ignore the law will face penalties.

There is little evidence that all religious programs in the UK and India would be similarly restricted and, as Jason Pitzl-Waters points out over on Wild Hunt, it’s discomfiting that the language around the restrictions are so vague. What is an “occult practice?” (Why does the definition include Satanism, which isn’t an “occult practice?”) Will it wind up including other minority faiths? Will this equate to a clampdown on religious expression by some groups but not others?

Once again, legitimate faiths and practices that hold spiritual value for many people are the scapegoats — receiving plenty of media attention while their own voices are muted, if not silenced.

If you dress goth, are you asking for trouble?

Melody McDermott was brutally attacked on a tram in Manchester because she is a goth. She’s now recovering from a broken eye socket.

Four years ago, 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster was walking through a Lancashire park at night with her boyfriend when they were beset upon by a group of teenage boys. The teens assaulted Robert Maltby first, then turned on Sophie when she tried to protect him. Robert recovered, but Sophie died of her injuries.

This was no isolated incident. Goths throughout the UK and America face bullying and assault on a regular basis, mostly because of their appearance. In greater Manchester, it happened again last month.

Melody McDermott was riding a tram with a male friend on Oct. 5 when a group of males began shouting at her. Without warning, they pushed her to the ground and one or more began stomping on her face. She was left with a broken eye socket, but is recovering. Her friend suffered a black eye.

After Lancaster’s death, many in the goth community rallied in favor of calling such attacks hate crimes — until then, a “hate crime” only included an attack based on race or sexual orientation. According to Wikipedia, In May 2009 the Justice Minister Jack Straw said while he could not change the law, he could amend the sentencing guidelines to require judges to treat an attack on a member of a subculture as an aggravating factor.

Although the Columbine High School shootings mistakenly convinced many that goths are aggressive, most are actually so pacifistic that they will not fight back when assaulted. Their combination of unusual appearance and unwillingness to hurt people unfortunately makes them vulnerable.

Since the attack on Melody, goths from all over the world have come forward to talk about members of the subculture as recurring targets for violence. “When is this hate and bullying going to end?” asked one woman. “My 9 year old gets picked on just ’cause she had brain cancer and me and her dad are goth.”

“This shows how important it is to class sub-culture to the list of hate crimes,” said another. “If they had beaten her for being gay/black/muslim they would get jail time for sure, but because she’s just a girl in black clothing, they will get off with a fine/community service. I am so sick of this.”

Unfortunately, such attacks leave others frightened: “Every time there’s a hate crime, I’m a bit more scared to go out. It’s shocking just how far some people will go. I’m scared to walk alone and I’m 20.”

But others championed Melody and wished her strength: “I hope Melody comes through this even stronger than before, and that she realises that they only hate because they don’t have the guts to express themselves like she has.”

What’s the solution here? Can we teach people not to bully and assault others just because they’re different? Should goths “tone it down” to make themselves less vulnerable?

Seaman’s submarine shooting rampage blamed on … game that has nothing to do with submarines

British seaman Ryan Donovan was recently sentenced to 25 years in jail for a shooting rampage on a submarine. Some say “Grand Theft Auto” is to blame.

Grand Theft Auto has been blamed for a lot of things. In fact, the series has been called the most controversial game franchise of all time by Guinness World Records. Some have claimed the game inspired multiple murder sprees, though none of those claims have held up in court. Most recently, GTA was blamed for inspiring the UK riots — as though there weren’t more legitimate forces at work.

Ryan Donovan, a 23-year-old seaman from Kent, was recently denied transfer from a submarine docked at Southampton to another he preferred. His response was to bring a gun on board last April, attacking several fellow workers and killing an officer, Lieutenant Commander Ian Molyneux, 36. Donovan admitted to the crime and has been put behind bars for 25 years.

End of story, right?

Not so fast. It turns out that Donovan, a year earlier, told a co-worker, “I am going to kill somebody.” But that’s not all. He also discussed “trying to ‘create a massacre in the control’ … The pair had discussed the computer game Grand Theft Auto, in which players took part in a “kill frenzy”. This, somehow, translates into GTA inspiring the shooting.

How many times do we jokingly tell co-workers “I’m going to kill someone” in a fit of frustration? And how often have GTA players talked about the game with co-workers? I get that the Daily Mail is not the most ethical or objective newspaper in the UK, and the things they say are taken with a very large lump of salt. It doesn’t even sound like the game played a major role in the court case. Still, sensationalism plays well. It gets people talking. And it gets people thinking about what it might mean the next time someone talks about this game — or something violent within it they enjoy. Are they the next killer? Should you report them to the police?

It certainly can’t hurt, right?

A sequel to the “Satanic Panic?”

Kids and adults play together at the annual Summerstar pagan festival in Washington State. Photo by Dannelle Meyers Photography.

The people of New Forest, England, recently faced an unlikely scourge: an anonymous “whistleblower” going by the name of “Alice,” who claimed in several online forums that Rosicrucian and Wiccan practitioners in the area were sexually abusing children.

In one such posting, shared on ShameOnYou.mobi, she wrote:

There is the secret Wiccan group in New Forest, England. Praying to “witches” and the devil and worse torturing children for the sake of their sick “religion”. They film and make fotos, which they distribute on the net.

Their leader, a demented Nick ####, called “Your Highness” by the other cult members. He lives in Minstead, preaches in the local church and pretends to be the “good guy” next door. Privately he boasts to be “an important Mason”, “your Highness” and doing incredibly sick stuff to children in his garage. He also abducts children occasionally, in the New Forest area. He abuses the children of his friends, drugging them and scaring them to death, so the children do not confide to anybody.

Other members of that particular paedophile ring are: His entire family. These family members have been abused and introduced into the Wiccan doctrine by Nick #### himself. They now abuse their own children.

“Alice” also turned up in the comments on a GodDiscussion.com post in which theistic Satanist Diane Vera addressed the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early 1990s, pointing out that allegations of child abuse by Satanic groups had been entirely debunked. In those comments, and in many other postings, “Alice” identifies specific residents of New Forest and the surrounding areas. Many of her posts have since been removed, likely because her actions could qualify as libel.

This is almost precisely how the first “Satanic Panic” began, in the late 1980s, as locals were accused of sexually abusing children during Satanic and/or Wiccan rituals in UK towns. In all, 52 children were taken from their parents and made wards of the court, while three men faced charges — but police found no evidence of the alleged “Satanic abuse.”

In America, the fires were stoked by books such as Michelle Remembers, written by psychologist Lawrence Pazder about a patient he said suffered from multiple-personality disorder as a result of her abuse experiences. (She later married him.) Those stories were eventually debunked, but not until well after the story had been picked up by the mainstream press, including Oprah, frightening millions. There don’t seem to be any good statistics on how many children were separated from their families — or from preschools they loved — during this period.

It’s true that, as a nation, we know more than we used to about Wiccans and even Satanists than we did in the 1980s. They’ve emerged as a much more everyday and benign presence in society. But fear is not behind us, and the conservative religious movement — embodied in the Evangelical Christian and to some extent the Tea Party movement, is gaining both ground and power in America.

Ultimately, the demonization and criminalization of people who practice alternative faiths, from Wicca to Satanism and everywhere in between, is not over. As long as reporters continue to draw connections between criminal activity and paganism, this can’t end. Facts must supersede fear, and paranoid individuals like “Alice” must be taken for what they are.

Readers, how were your lives affected by the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s? Did the stories frighten you? Were you suspected of wrongdoing because of your beliefs or interests? How could we keep it from happening again? Share your stories in the comments.

Parents respond to violent video games ruling

Will playing Grand Theft Auto make kids into real car thieves? Parents, mostly, say no. Photo by Flickr user Szili.

Last week, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the sale of violent video games can’t be restricted — even to minors. The Internet has been awash in responses since the ruling, and parents have been among the loudest voices in the room. Since this blog is so often written with parents in mind, I thought it would be good to check in with other parents and see what they’re saying about the decision.

WFMY News in North Carolina interviewed one mom who has been letting her son play Grand Theft Auto — under close supervision. She says, while the game is indeed gory, it doesn’t make him more aggressive. In fact, she notices the opposite:

She instead explained that allowing her son to play these type of games acts as a stress reliever. “I think sometimes it takes out some of the aggressions because he can come in here and play it when he’s pissed and not take it out on anybody around,” expressed Hicks.

On the flip side, NewsOne ran a piece by mom Tamika Mallory saying the ruling “makes parents’ jobs harder.” As a working mom, she says she doesn’t have the time to supervise her kids the way Hicks does:

While we may restrict gruesome video games in our homes, who will protect the kids when they set foot into the outside world? Knowing that my son wasn’t running around in the streets, I took comfort in the notion that video games at least provided an alternative, safe form of recreation for young people. But what are we teaching them if these games are inundated with nothing but guns, shooting and graphic violence? How different is that from what’s tragically out on the streets? And what kind of subliminal impact are we having on these kids if we flood them with these messages?

On that point, Mallory seems to be in the minority. InForum, a news Website in Fargo, North Dakota, found that “903 of 1,079 participants in The Forum’s online poll, nearly 84 percent, favor placing the responsibility of managing children’s’ access to video games with parents, while 10 percent said it was the business owner/gaming industry’s role. About 5 percent believe the government should be responsible.”

Another poll, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, also found that “parents are more responsible than the government — 79 percent to 4 percent — for limiting the amount of sex and violence children are exposed to in video games.”

And yet, their respondents paradoxically said government should be involved: “67 percent … said states should be able to prohibit sale of violent video games to children … 28 percent of U.S. adults said states should be barred from enacting prohibitions of sales and rentals of such games to minors.”

The differences in these polls undoubtedly relate to the questions that were asked, as well as the folks who answered.

Gabrielle Cullen, a mom in San Rafael, Calif., offered a balanced look at the ruling, but ultimately agreed that the responsibility rests with the parents:

It seems that gaming does have some adverse effects but can be easily contained and/or offset by conscious parenting. Violent video games will NOT turn your child into a cold-blooded killer and trying to prevent a child from buying a video game isn’t going to create more involved parents. It is similar to any aspect of raising a family, be aware of what’s going on in your house, attempt to engage in interesting conversation and simply limit the amount of time spent in front of the TV, computer, etc.

At the opposite end of the state, parents in Altadena chimed in on a similar discussion of gaming among teens and how parents should be involved. The comments include this one from a 15-year-old gamer who said even some of the most gruesome games can have positive messages, and that kids are paying attention to those messages:

For example, Metal Gear Solid, a popular shooting game, is all about how terrible and unnecessary war is. Grand Theft Auto 4 (the game where you can kill prostitutes) even has a good moral message. The main character spends the whole game searching for a man to get revenge. At the end, when the player finds this person, the game shows that revenge does not solve anything. In fact, almost games try to communicate messages such as these, and this law would put those views out of reach of minors.

Troy Wolverton, a parent and columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, said he felt conflicted about the Supreme Court’s ruling. On the one hand, he supports freedom of speech. On the other, he worries how these games might affect teen players.

[California's] law didn’t attempt to outlaw violent games or prevent adults from accessing them, which would have been clearly unconstitutional. It didn't even attempt to prevent children from playing them. It merely said that kids ought to have an adult's permission before they can buy or rent one. As a parent, I find that reasonable.

Unfortunately, for parents who do choose to be involved with their kids’ gaming habits — as many parents and others agree is the best course of action — there’s always someone out there telling them that’s not such a great idea, either. For example, British parenting coach Sue Atkins quotes author Reg Bailey, who has published a new book called Letting Children Be Children.:

“One father said it was OK that he played Grand Theft Auto with his 13-year-old son because it helped them bond together.” He added that there “must be easier ways of bonding” with a child than playing a game that allowed “gangsters to run over prostitutes”.

“That doesn’t seem to be a very healthy balance in a relationship between father and son.”

Parenting is not an easy job. Each parent must determine what’s best for his or her own kids. We do the best we can to keep an eye on their activities, and to make decisions or set limits when necessary. Ultimately, the government decided to butt out of this one. What goes on between informed, involved parents and their kids shouldn’t be anyone else’s business.

Parents, what’s your take on the ruling? Are you happy to have the decision left up to you, or are you angry that you don’t have that extra layer of protection?