Friday, September 22, 2006

Life Imitates Something

During my morning perusal of the headlines, I found "Woman Pleads Not Guilty to Throwing Her Sons in San Francisco Bay." Seems a San Francisco woman stands accused of drowning her three sons by, well, throwing them in San Francisco Bay. According to the psychiatric evaluation, she believed God had commanded her to do this. Sound familiar? Five years ago, Andrea Yates made headlines for killing her five children because she thought she was saving them from eternal damnation. There is even a website that compiles the details of instances of mothers who kill their children (they log nine instances, involving 23 children) for reasons ranging from "God commanded it" to "so we could live together in Heaven." Do me a favor. Don't click that link. It is a real downer. I'm just providing it to prove that such things do happen, and that there is documented evidence that religious beliefs, however misguided they may be, led at least nine women to commit infanticide (fillicide, really, as not all of the victims were infants).

That's just something to keep in mind as election season gets into full swing and legislators who have not seen a video game since Q-Bert start writing laws restricting access to video games. One of the favorite arguments for this sort of legislation is that video games might lead people to imitate what they see in the games. Thus, access to video games must be tightly controlled, for the children's sake. Children could get ideas from violent video games.

I would just like to note that these legislators seem to be just peachy-keen with psychotic mothers having access to the Book of Genesis, in which God orders a parent to kill his child. Talk about getting ideas from the media.

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