With Jack Thompson soon to be disbarred from the Florida Bar, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that everyone is coming out of the woodwork, trying to be the next great “anti-gaming” voice. This time we have Reverend Richard Patrick of Newport News, Virginia. Reverend Patrick, blames video games and violent entertainment for all crime that, he says, affects some 90% of his congregation.

So how do you deal with such taint that is spreading through his congregation like a disease? Simple: Have a good ol’ fashioned book game burning!

We are considering having something similar to a rally where parents and children can bring CDs and video games that they consider are destructive to the mind set of our youth and have a burning…

Young people are being influenced by what they see and what they hear. They are being influenced by television … television and videos are telling young people a vision but something that’s not reality…

[Violent media] has a tremendous influence on young people and violence. That’s basically all they see. Most of them try to emulate what they see, when in reality, the people they see don’t even live in those communities. Some of the rappers they see on TV portraying crime don’t live in the urban areas — they live in the suburbs somewhere. It’s all a facade.

Reverend, Reverend, Reverend… when are you going to learn that we live in the 21st century, where not only have we as a public moved past the absurd notion of destroying that which we personally disapprove of, but the idea of burning all the video games in the world may actually get you killed.

No, I’m serious! Do you have any idea what compact discs are made of? If you breathed any of that in, you’d be seriously FUBAR’d. Not only that, but the smoke and chemical residue would seep into the Earth, further damaging the environment and possibly killing some of the local wildlife. So I have but one question for Rev. Richard Patrick:

Why do you hate mother nature?

via Daily Press, by way of Game Politics

Popularity: unranked [?]