Last Monday, the United States Supreme Court, by a 7-2 vote, kicked another leg out from beneath traditional notions of parental authority and moral responsibility with its First Amendment decision invalidating a California law that restricted the sale of violent video games to minors.

Beatrice Campbell, the British actress who first played Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s play, “Pygmalion” (later adapted into the musical and movie “My Fair Lady”), reportedly remarked about couples engaging in illicit sex: “I don’t care what they do, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”

It’s fortunate horses aren’t used as a regular transport mode any longer, because graphic images of sexuality, as well as of violence and just plain outrageous behavior, are all over “the street” — pervading t.v. programming, cinema, Internet sites, cell phones and video games.

Now, thanks to the court’s latest ruling, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the most perverse and sadistic video games, an increasingly popular form of entertainment, can be sold directly to minors without even a by-your-leave to their parents.

Grant it, parents no longer wield the unchallenged authority they used to in molding their children’s ethical sensibilities. Still, many must find Monday’s decision as infuriating as the lucrative video-game industry finds it gratifying

I’m a strong proponent of the First Amendment’s protection of unpopular speech as a critical safeguard for open political discourse and intellectual and artistic creativity. But recent Supreme Court rulings giving an expansive and unbalanced interpretation of that right in favor of big-money interests have left me baffled and frustrated.

The balancing limitations which the court has traditionally applied to free speech, such as reasonable restrictions on the “time, manner and place” of its exercise, a reduced level of protection for commercial speech, and a scaled-down application to children, all seem to have been cast to the winds in a recent series of high court decisions.

Brown is a prime example. The reasoning behind Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion can be summarized as follows:

Psychological studies have not convincingly proven that “violent video games cause minors to act aggressively,” thus undercutting the stated purpose of the statute.

The statute at issue discriminated against older forms of media, since it didn’t encompass violence portrayed in literature (for example, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Homer’s “Odyssey,” Dante’s “Inferno” or Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”), Saturday morning t.v. cartoons (like Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner), or superhero comic books.

The statute was also overly broad, because not “all of the children who are forbidden to purchase violent video games on their own have parents who care whether they purchase violent video games.” Therefore, the law didn’t necessarily support what parents want, but only “what the State thinks parents ought to want.”

Like a debater who skillfully argues for a ridiculous proposition, Justice Scalia has “waterboarded” reason until it admits whatever he wishes.

The last time I looked, kids were still modeling their behaviors on what or who they saw as “cool” (a durable term if there ever was one). If violent video games are considered “cool,” then a lot of kids are going to try to act “cool.” In a somewhat different cultural context, violent jihadist websites have proven very successful in attracting young wannabe recruits.

Whether or not psychological research has conclusively established this connection, the California Legislature felt it sufficiently evident to enact the law, and, as Justice Scalia is fond of pointing out, broad social policy judgments should be made by elected legislators, not appointed judges. If some parents really want their children to partake of these games, they can always buy them as stocking stuffers for the holidays.

Perhaps the video game industry is being singled out for special treatment, as Justice Scalia suggests. But then again, when was the last time you heard of a violent delinquent copycatting “Road Runner” cartoons? If so, please stand up and say, “Beep, Beep!”

What’s particularly puzzling about the Brown decision is its inconsistency with the court’s own precedents. The challenged statute in Brown tracked the wording of a 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision, Miller v. California. In Miller, the Court gave the green light to state and local governments to prohibit the sale of sexually explicit materials which were considered “patently offensive” based upon prevailing community standards and lacked serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The Miller case was about pornography sales generally, not specifically sales to minors or sales of materials involving violence. As Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out in a dissenting opinion in Brown, however, the high court has previously held that government can adopt even “more stringent controls on communicative materials available to youths than on those available to adults.”

So graphic sex can be kept from kids, but graphic violence cannot? A vendor can legitimately be barred from selling or renting an “x”-rated move to a minor but not a violent video game glorifying the 1999 slaughter at Columbine High School?

I’ll be the first to admit that keeping kids away from dangerous temptations – adolescent sex, drugs, alcoholic binging, smoking, gangs, daredevil activities – is an exceedingly difficult and often thankless job for parents. Children have so many opportunities to access them, parents so little time, energy and resources to interdict them.

But for those parents willing to fight the good fight for their kids, the First Amendment should not prevent government from lending its assistance by banning commercial peddling of such temptations. We do it already for cigarettes, drugs and alcohol, why not for violent video games?