One of the things that has become a boon for the transgender community was the coming of the internet. I’ve no empirical data to back up that belief, but the reality that my transgender peers and I can go online and find out about transgender people and issues has allowed community building. Previously, the relatively small number of out transpeople, and lack of interconnectivity between geographically separated transcommunities made it difficult for transpeople to learn of each others’ existence.
Not only has the internet provided means for transpeople to interconnect, it’s also provided transpeople access to accurate information regarding transgender issues to a wide audience. Examples include TS Roadmap, Psychology of Gender Identity and Transsexualism, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Transgender Law Center.
This is equally true for LGBT people and community organizations, like the Ex-Gay Watch and Truth Wins Out, that seek to counter the lies spread by ex-gay ministries. Without the internet, Michael Johnston would never have been exposed. We would never know about Kyle and the other kid being confined at LIA/R. The claims made by Alan Chambers and others in small town newspapers throughout the nation would never be tracked and exposed. And the real life stories of those who have gone through ex-gay ministries and survived — or didn’t — would never have a voice.
These kinds of non-pornographic websites are ones many want to keep out of high school students reach.
Florida’s Palm Beach County School District did just that with LGBT related websites. In May, the Independent Gay News reported that an Inlet Grove High School senior — Joe Dellosa — writing for his school’s online news publication (Iiletspin.com), found:
“…that the websites of such prominent gay rights or advocacy organizations as Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (www.glaad.org), Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (www.pflag.org), Gay-Straight Alliance Network (www.gsanetwork.org), and Out & Equal Workplace Advocates (www.outandequal.org) are inaccessible using a District computer.
At the same time, however, inletspin.com revealed several websites of organizations that did not support homosexuality that were not blocked. “For instance, www.narth.com—the website of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality—was not blocked. The websites for the Traditional Values Coalition (www.traditionalvalues.org), the American Family Association (www.afa.net), and Focus on the Family (www.family.org), three organizations that feature material on their websites against gay rights, were not blocked, either.”
If a student attempted to navigate to one of the blocked LGBT websites on a school computer, the student would receive a Blue Coat Systems Inc.’s WebFilter message labeling the sites “Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles” sites.
Blue Coat WebFilter defines Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles as:
Sites that provide information, promote, or cater to gays, lesbians, swingers, other sexual orientations or practices, or a particular fetish. This category does not include sites that are sexually gratuitous in nature which would typically fall under the Pornography category.
This goes beyond just blocking sites that use the word “gay” or talk about homosexual issues.
Apparently this webfilter, as well as other content filters, are used in attempts to comply with federal law. In a 365Gay.com article District spokesperson Bob LaRocca indicated:
… the district complies with the Child Online Protection Act and the Children Internet Protection Act said that the decision to block certain sites is based on age-appropriateness and the need to protect the youngest students.
The Florida Sun-Sentinel and 365Gay.com now report that some of the previously blocked websites are now unblocked, but some sites remain blocked. Per the Sun-Sentinel article, Michael Woods (a teacher at Forest Hill High School in West Palm Beach who is trying to start a Gay Straight Alliance club on campus) indicated he could now use a school computer to navigate to the national Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network website, but he received the “Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles” message when he attempted to navigate to the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The 365Gay.com article indicated:
Other sites still banned include the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Out & Equal Workplace Advocates.
Per the 365Gay.com article, websites belonging to the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, the Traditional Values Coalition and the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) can all still be viewed. Given the definition of Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles above, not blocking these sites makes sense as the filtering is described — these particular websites aren’t catering to “gays, lesbians, swingers, other sexual orientations or practices, or a particular fetish;” these websites are instead catering to people who believe the people in that list are sinners, or need reparative therapy.
Per a Blue Coat Systems press release:
Broadband-Testing Laboratories, Europe’s foremost independent network testing facility and consultancy organization, shows Blue Coat WebFilter to have the highest level of recognition and accuracy in classifying URLs among those tested. The test, conducted in Moux, France, compared Blue Coat WebFilter to Websense v6.1, SmartFilter v4, Surf Control and ALSI Intersafe.
It’s reasonable to assume then that the specific techniques of how the Blue Coat WebFilter content filter actually filters information were most likely intentionally designed into the product — and again, this all goes beyond filtering keywords like “gay” or “homosexual.” Keyword screening would automatically exclude NARTH and Focus on the Family. Instead, someone has either decided — or programmed the system to decide — that these groups are to be excepted from the “no discussion about homosexuality” rule. To allow NARTH and not XGW is an endorsement of NARTH and its anti-gay agenda. Surely this is – at least in some states – illegal.
And, is an apparent government sanctioned message that gay is bad and ex-gay is good that a third party programmed in off-the-shelf web content Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles filtering a message that the LGBT community can accept? The message that government education agencies indicate that LGBT activism organizations are wrong and need to be filtered, and organizations that indicate LGBT people are sinful and/or can or should be cured of their homosexuality or transsexuality are right and don’t need to be filtered?
I believe web content filters for public schools should — and likely will — become a higher priority issue for LGBT activism organizations than the issue is now. Continuing to build LGBT community is going to be difficult if the next generation can’t find out anything about those of us who are already out of the closet, or find out what can and can’t be done regarding organizing their own LGBT groups within their own schools.
*****Note******
By the way, I tested the https://exgaywatch.com website on their Verify a site category in the WebFilter database. This is the entry:
The page you want reviewed is https://exgaywatch.com
This page is currently categorized as Blogs/Newsgroups, and Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles
You can test if a website is blocked or not here with their Sitesearch tool.
—–
Timothy Kincaid and David Roberts of the Ex-Gay Watch contributed to this entry.
Interesting to me, Pams House Blend is not labeled as Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles, only blogs/newsgroups and politics/activism. Odd.
I checked out that most rare of sites…. Blog Active
The page you want reviewed is https://www.blogactive.com/
This page is currently categorized as Blogs/Newsgroups, and Political/Activist Groups
I think you should get together and have Ex-Gay Watch changed to the same category. Though they probably block the political stuff too?
The Child Online Protection Act was ruled has been blocked by the courts from being enforced since 1998. The Children’s Internet Protection Act is written so it specifically applies only to porn. I don’t see how any of these two laws apply here.
We had this issue at my high school. I even went so far as to contact the system administrator for the whole district to complain… no dice. This was the Atlanta Public School district, by the way.
Autumn is absolutely right. When I think now of who I would never have know, but not for the Net and several blog communities I belong too-it reminds me I would have had some seriously empty places in my life.
I angers me that young people would be cut off from this vital process. ESPECIALLY gay AND straight kids.
Why is THIS such a bone of contention for educational institutions.
Living, working with and being related to the LGBT…a part of all humanity is IMPORTANT to prepare young people for.
And considerably REDUNDANT for some since a lot of young people might already have a gay or trans family member and they’ll have questions that can be discreetly answered through the Net.
It’s unforgivable that an institution, whose job it is to be informed and SHARE information vital to their students, turn into such cowering wuss puddles when it comes to LGBT issues.
And this IS vital information, not casual information.
Why are schools even allowed to do that?
I believe we need to separate the school districts somewhat from the companies making the content filters.
From a marketing perspective, I would guess the majority of blocking software buyers would want to block all “Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyle” websites from their home (“to protect children”) and business (“to protect productivity”) computers. They’re making products to fulfill the market niche. If one thinks about it for a minute — Doesn’t Blue Coat’s use of the term “Alternative Lifestyle” to describe their blocking tool for “Sites that provide information, promote, or cater to gays, lesbians, swingers, other sexual orientations or practices, or a particular fetish” (transsexuals and other transgender people no doubt fall under “fetish”) indicate who their market is?
The problem is that their product, when used as an off-the-shelf product in libraries and schools, blocks websites that library patrons and students shouldn’t have blocked for them.
I know don’t know exactly how LGBT organizations view this — is it a high or low priority civil rights issue? If LGBT civil rights organization don’t publicly demand that internet content filters differentiate between pornographic and non-pornographic LGBT websites, these content filters are likely to have a significant impact on students’ ability to learn about LGBT people and about how to organize Gay-Straight Alliance clubs.
Originally posted by Lij…, but accidentally deleted. ~~A~~
The page you want reviewed is https://www.hrc.org/
This page is currently categorized as Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles, and Political/Activist Groups
The page you want reviewed is https://lovewonout.org/
This page is currently categorized as Religion
The page you want reviewed is https://www.exodus.to/
This page is currently categorized as Religion
The page you want reviewed is https://www.narth.org/
This page is currently categorized as Health
The page you want reviewed is https://www.family.org/ (Focus on the Family)
This page is currently categorized as Religion, Education, and Health
The page you want reviewed is https://www.traditionalvalues.org/
This page is currently categorized as Political/Activist Groups
The page you want reviewed is https://www.defendthefamily.com/
This page is currently categorized as Political/Activist Groups, and News/Media
______________________________________________
At first I was just bored…. now I am flaming mad. This is a form of blatant discrimination concerning our message. To block the HRC?
We have discussed this before here.
GLAAD also was working on net filters for a while. I don’t recall the outcome.
Has no one gone to their webpage and looked at their ‘customers’ link, specifically ‘customers by industry’?
Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, the National Guard, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Nuclear Regulartory Commission, DARPA, and a whole host of other federal agencies are the prime customers of Blue Coat. Not only that, there are several other major companies that are LGBT friendly that use this company’s software.
How about we get HRC, GLAAD and a few others involved on this issue and we start writing letters? The California Franchise Tax Board in California is a customer…their democratic members are the first that will get a letter from me, as will every LGBT state legislator we have in this state…and of course our two Democratic Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Let’s put some pressure on Blue Coat and make a difference.
Autumn said, “I believe we need to separate the school districts somewhat from the companies making the content filters.”
I agree, but either way you slice it, Blue Coat does not make the decision about what categories are filtered, they only assign the categories. The school districts themselves then decide what categories are filtered. Thus, it is the school that has decided to filter out “Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles”.
The school has no standing upon which to do so to conform to Federal regulation, since Blue Coat has a “Pornography” rating for sexually explicit sites. Surely Blue Coat could create a specific category for “Sexual Identity” but regardless, the responsibility for such biased filtering seems to me to fall squarely on the school.
Filters? Can you remember the only filters School Admin and Teachers were worried about were the ones attached to cigarettes. Not so much the butts littering in the school’s parking lots but the idea their pupils were smoking.
However, resourceful and internet-savvy kids know where else to get information about GLBT subjects: their public library. It’s where I stumbled onto The Advocate.
When the interest is keen, people will find the information.
Ex-Gay Watch is less about “sexuality/alternative lifestyles” than Exodus. Religion, education, and mental health are also key topics here, but the rating service denies us credit for that.
Meanwhile, Exodus has far more to do with “sexuality/alternative lifestyles” and “politics” than with “religion.” And neither NARTH or Focus on the Family have any connection to mainstream professional “health” issues.
So the bias lies squarely with the rating service, which gives government facilities, schools and workplaces false criteria by which to perform otherwise legitimate filtering.
Mike, the problem here doesn’t seem to be a bias on Blue Coat’s part but rather the criteria they use to determine what a site is about. I would guess their determination of that criteria is based upon key words that show up in a site, and the frequency of those key words. On XGW, I would imagine that the words that trigger a rating of Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles come up quite a bit.
I would point out that when you get a determination at the link provided above, Blue Coat does provide a way to dispute an incorrect determination. Have you tried to do so? It would be interesting to see what happens when you do.
“On XGW, I would imagine that the words that trigger a rating of Sexuality/Alternative Lifestyles come up quite a bit.”
More than Narth or Exodus?
Maybe, if the frequency of words referring to treatment like “therapy” is higher on NARTH and words referring to religion like “Biblical” and “God” is higher on Exodus than words like “gay” or “transgendered”. In fact, it could be words like “therapy” that are causing NARTH to be categorized under health, and words like “Biblical” causing EXODUS to be categorized under religion.
With programs like Blue Coat, there aren’t human beings sitting there reviewing pages individually and deciding what each one is by content. Instead, it’s a program, with the same problems and limitations all programs have when it comes to assessing anything. Programs can’t parse context, they can only make determinations based upon a set of variables and the frequency of those variables. Again, that’s why Blue Coat provides a way to dispute a determination, because they recognize the limitations of their program. I’m not sure what one could expect from Blue Coat that could make their program more precise.