Louisiana House Mulls Pair of "Games as Porn" Bills

You might think state legislators in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana would have more important issues on which to focus their energies.

But in a bi-partisan effort last week, a pair of video game bills were introduced by members from both sides of the aisle in the Louisiana House. The bills reprise two troubling themes for the video game industry. The first is the "games as porn" approach which has popped up recently in Utah and Delaware. In addition, the 25 to Life fallout continues as the Louisiana bills specifically reference violence against law enforcement officers.

Republican A.G. Crowe and Democrat Roy Burrell (left) introduced nearly identical pieces of legislation designed to add violent games to the list of materials barred from distribution to minors under the state's existing obscenity statutes.

Crowe's bill is HB254, while Burrell's is HB421. Both proposals would amend the definition of "material that is harmful to minors" to include a video game which "exploits or is devoted to... illicit sex or sexual immorality... that the average person applying contemporary community standards would find... presented in a manner to provoke or arouse lust, passion, or perversion..."

The bills also defines the following acts as covered: "the murder of a law enforcement officer, first degree murder, as well as various degrees of rape, kidnapping, terrorism, torture and drug offenses.

The Shreveport Times has a little more on this.