First, a quick review of recent events.

The Louisiana Legislature passed a bill last week that bans the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. The bill was coauthored by crusading conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson of Coral Gables, Florida . (The Louisiana Senate passed the bill unanimously.) Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco is expected to sign it into law. The Shreveport Times, reported last week that the bill's principal sponsor, Democratic Senator Roy Burrell,  used a method similar to the "three-prong test" of the

U. S. Supreme Court's obscenity ruling that requires a finding of the following: The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence. The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to the prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors. The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors. Vendors would be subject to fines of between $100 and $2,000 and up to a year in prison.

In an editorial, the paper denounced the bill, arguing that the courts have struck down similar legislation in other states as unconstitutional.  

In the best light, well-meaning politicians are trying to find that magic bullet to combat a societal ill the public fears is de-sensitizing young minds to violent behavior. Burrell has been active in a variety of causes that benefit youth.

From a less favorable viewpoint, politicians understand such efforts play well with an alarmed public: video games are the latest scapegoats in a tradition that includes comic books, rock 'n' roll, Pokemon cards and other media likely to tarnish the purity of modern youth.

The fact that Jack Thompson is testifying in Baton Rouge in favor of the bill should immediately set off alarms. Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has made his career denouncing video game violence and telling whoppers like "[There's more research that proves video games harm children] than there is that smoking causes cancer." Thompson thrives on chasing cultural ambulances and evokes no one so strongly as Fredric Wertham, a psychologist whose 1950s book, "Seduction of the Innocent," lead to congressional hearings on the dangers of comic books.

( In an act of North/South solidarity and bipartisanship, Louisiana's Democrats were joined by Republicans in Minnesota where a similar bill was recently signed by the GOP governor. )

Conservative columnist Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media calls Thompson a "hero" and recommends his book Out of Harm's Way, about

the dangers posed by what passes for "entertainment" on television, radio and video games. The book not only describes how Thompson has waged a valiant legal war on those who pollute our culture, it offers evidence of direct harm caused by what children see, read and hear.

Senator Hillary Clinton  (D-NY) recently spoke at a conference sponsored by the New America Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation -- and sounded, however tentatively, a lot like Jack Thompson:

One could make the argument that with some additional research the case will be conclusive that we are causing long-term public health damage to many, many children and therefore to society. You know, lots of times the response comes back to me, "You know my kid doesn't get all of that, my kid's fine." Well, obviously, certain children are more vulnerable than other children. Children in situations of vulnerability because of family circumstances or neighborhood circumstances may very well be more prey to not only the impact of a multi-media environment but also to individuals who exploit that environment. So yes, we are all of different vulnerabilities, physically and emotionally and psychologically but the evidence is conclusive that on balance the exposure to this much media and particularly to the violent content of it is not good for children and teenagers. And so what I'm hoping is that all we can come together. If there were an epidemic sweeping through our children of some kind of SARS of some other kind of infectious disease, we would all band together and figure out what to do to protect our children.

Well this is a silent epidemic. We don't necessarily see the results immediately. Sometimes there's a direct correlation but most of the times it's aggregate, it's that desensitization over years and years and years. It's getting in your mind that it's okay to diss people because they're women or they're a different color or from a different place...

Meanwhile, Clinton's office has issued a guide to help parents evaluate the content of video games; and last year, she introduced a bill with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)  that would restrict violent and pornographic games and fund a study of the effects of the Internet and video games on children. (The bill was promptly denounced by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, newspaper, which sneered that the Family Entertainment Protection Act smacked of "opportunism" and "the nanny state." )  The bill has gone nowhere in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Now comes Left Behind: Eternal Forces into the marketplace -- and into the whirlwind of the strange politics of games. Based on the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels by Tim LaHaye,  it is likely to dramatically and permanently reframe the narrowly wonky issue of sex and violence in games.  Indeed, it has already raised the specter of indoctrination of children in an ideology of hate and religious warfare.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a "real-time strategy" game in which Christian militias roam the streets of New York on a mission to convert or kill New Yorkers while battling the forces of the Anti-Christ in the aftermath of the "rapture" -- an event in which the saved, biblically correct Christians are taken into the heavens by Jesus. And who are those "left behind," to covert or be killed, according to the novels? Why Catholics, Jews, Muslims, mainline Protestantism not to mention the non-religious, gays and lesbians. You can switch sides in the game, and be the Anti-Christ too and join his long-horned demons in snacking on Christians. Jonathan Hutson's ongoing series here at Talk to Action, has exposed how this game indoctrinates young evangelicals in the horrific ways of the End Times -- according to the bigoted and bloodthirsty imagination of Tim LaHaye.

The game has understandably already generated tremendous controversy -- with more on the way. Indeed, Jack Thompson, who has crusaded against what he sees as immorality in popular culture for a generation, is alarmed.  As Huston reported, Thompson recently wrote to James Dobson of Focus on the Family about it: "My words cannot fully describe what a betrayal this has been by Tyndale," Mr. Thompson wrote, "not just to me but to all of the Christian families out there who are trying to protect our kids from the corrosive, violent effects of violent media. A Christian organization has now become one of the mental molesters of minors for money."

"What is more," Mr. Thompson continued, "we as a nation are involved in a war on terror, and this game gives radical Islamists two arguments: that we indeed do export pop culture sewage to the rest of the world, and we Christians entertain ourselves with the notion of killing infidels, now in a `Christian game'."

You can read all about this incredible knuckleheaded move by Tyndale House, your publisher and mine, at <http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959>. What you will read there will break your heart.

I am thus respectfully calling upon you, Dr. Dobson, to do what you can to get Tyndale House to pull the plug on this blasphemy, and failing that, I respectfully urge you to sever all ties with Tyndale House. All ties.

This is the worst example I have ever seen of how pop culture has conformed the Church to its image, rather than the Body of Christ serving as light and salt in the world.

The people at Tyndale House should be ashamed of themselves, but they are not. Anyone can make a mistake. Tyndale House, now staring the mistake right in the face, refuse to do anything about it. This is outrageous.

It is fair to say that people of all political and religious persuasions are concerned about the influence of media on children. At the same time, there is significant debate about how influential media, including games can actually be, and what, if anything, should be done about it; and if so, by whom.  Indeed, many of those concerned about the implications for First Amendment protections of free speech argue that there should be no more restrictions on games than on any other media. So far, society and the courts have not reached even a rough consensus on all this. But  the growing controversy over the Left Behind game may very well unravel even what consensus exists between conservative moralists and liberal avatars of consumer protection. Left Behind: Eternal Forces which is intended for children as young as 13, (the manufacturer is hoping to get a rating that will get it down to 6),  may very well be restricted to adults in Louisiana under the new law.  But how will conservative evangelicals aligned with Tim LaHaye feel about that? And meanwhile, how civil libertarian will New Yorkers feel about a game that makes them the focus of mass slaughter for being religiously incorrect?

Whatever one's views of the relative danger to society posed by computer games, all would agree that they are just games. But Hutson argues that Left Behind: Eternal Force is about reenforcing the core ideology of  Tim LaHaye -- that the End Times are already here, and that he and/or his children will be alive to see the events depicted in the novels and the game. If video games desensitize children to violence, and if, as a Kaiser Family Foundation study shows,  violent games routinely reach children far younger than the age they are intended for-- then what happens when conservative evangelical Christians provide Left Benind: Eternal Forces to their children -- and in so doing immerse them in the ideology of imminent religious warfare?

Chip Berlet nails it -- noting that focusing on the game alone can miss the point:  

The real scandal involving the violent video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces is that the demonization of enemies, bloodthirsty dualism, and murderous rampages on the computer screen are accurate reflections of the apocalyptic theology espoused by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in their Left Behind series of novels which have sold more than 70 million copies.

Few in the mainstream media have dared confront the fact that the best-selling Left Behind series is a primer valorizing bigotry, paranoia, and guerrilla warfare against those who promote tolerance, pluralism, and global cooperation. Almost four years ago, however, author Gershom Gorenberg, blasted the Left Behind series for its open "contempt for Judaism," making a "fanatic killer" a hero, and general rejection of tolerance and democratic civil society.

Journalist Craig Unger published an astounding article on the LaHayist worldview -- and what it means for American and world politics -- in the December 2005 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.  The media and the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties of course, didn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

It will take those who are truly committed to a democratic pluralist society to take up the challenge: to learn from Berlet, Hutson, Unger and others -- and consider what can be done.