Personally — I don’t buy it. I am an occasional video-game player, and though I have not played GTA ... I have played some violent games with definite adult content (God of War, for instance — a game that I cannot recommend highly enough). I am a conservative, a Christian, etc., and I just don’t buy that this particular video game (due to crudity, lust, whatever) is much of a concern for an adult mind. Children are a different situation entirely.
The analogous situation, to me, would be movies. I watch relatively violent movies, where foul language is fairly common, and occasional nudity/lust is certainly not unheard of. Among my favorite movies of late is The Departed — the language is consistently objectionable, and the movie is a general bloodbath ... but, like GTA, it is a genuinely good movie. Gladiator, Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, 300 and The Patriot were all bloodbaths. All are still entirely worth seeing. Despite my movie preferences, I remain the strong Christian conservative I was before viewing them.
I simply don’t buy that people of otherwise strong morality can be unwantingly corrupted by movies, video games, or even the occasional adult feature (which my wife and I have been known to very occasionally partake).
Weak moral conviction or weak marriages might be succeptible — truly strong values are likely not. Like money, “corrupting influences” do not destroy morality in men — they may simply expose deficiencies that were always there.
H
Put simply (for adults):
It’s not _whether_ certain content is present, it’s _why_.