“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” a top-selling, violent video game, has been busted for having hidden sexual content. The game was yanked off store shelves – and earned an attack by Sen. Hillary Clinton, a lawsuit from a New York resident, and catapulted to cult status among serious gamers – after some computer whiz discovered a secret sex scene programmed into the game.

The undisclosed content earned the game a new rating. When it was originally released in October, the game carried an “M” rating, which stands for “mature” or intended for people 17 or older. The rating got boosted to “AO,” adults only. More than 5 million copies of the game were sold last year.

The short sex scene can only be discovered by players who are looking for it – of course, with all the publicity, that’s pretty much everyone who has the game at this point. But the rampant, tasteless, constant and sociopathic violence embedded throughout the game has always been there, clear for all to see.

What sense does that make? The sex scenes are unfit for minors, but the same could easily be said about the amorality of the rest of the game. Players are encouraged to commit virtual crimes; the whole purpose is to steal and kill.

Sex, that’ll get a game knocked out of stores. But unabashed violence is fine?

We don’t support efforts to censor video games any more than we would newspapers or magazines. But just as some magazines should be kept out of reach of children, so should video games that promote realistic mayhem and violence. And ratings must be trustworthy enough so that parents can trust them. That’s not the case now.

Video games probably don’t push kids toward a life of crime. Mostly, they’re just escapist fun. Sometimes, the question of whether we can create ultra-realistic, violent games isn’t nearly as important as whether we should.

We’ve read about video games marketed toward young Muslims that let players use virtual rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices against U.S. soldiers in Iraq. It left us feeling uneasy. Are games in the U.S. that let players take aim at cops and soldiers any different?