| Mr Khan said: Though i do quite like the argument that this has evolved into (excellent insight into philosophy on some very sticky issues), the original point of the post has long since become moot. Game depicts child having sex, acknowledging that said child is under 18 years of age. Thereby, game is banned by default in America, regardless of content. |
It's an interesting thing. I haven't played the game in question & have no plans on it, but from our discussion here I've gathered that the game says that the women are all of age.
Now, let's say that they're lying--the women in this game are all fictional representations of underage women. Still, the legal situation is slightly murky. Several years back the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that fictional child pornography was protected by the 1st Amendment--that there was no compelling governmental interest in outlawing such material (such as protecting real-life children).
After that, the U.S. Congress under Bush (II) passed legislation that tries to make this kind of thing illegal. To my knowledge, only one person has been convicted since on such "fictional child pornography," and while that case has gone to an appellate court and the conviction was upheld there, it hasn't gone all the way up to the Supreme Court (whether it ever will or not).
So, yeah. If my understandings are correct, by law a game like this would be illegal (assuming we grant that the fictional characters are underage, despite the game's explicit denial of such)... except that a rather recent Supreme Court ruling holds that kind of law unconstitutional, and some court might well overturn the relevant law in the future on that precedent.
