Metro Schools sued over block on gay Web sites

Source: The Tennessean

Metro Nashville and Knox County school districts face a First Amendment lawsuit over blocking access to gay-themed Web sites.

The American Civil Liberties Union is representing two Hume-Fogg High School students, Keila Franks and Emily Logan, and a Fulton High freshman and librarian. The sites aren't sexual in nature and include Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the Human Rights Campaign and sites to support gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.

The federal suit, filed Tuesday, alleges the districts don't block Web sites that purport to change gay people's sexual orientation, which the ACLU says constitutes viewpoint discrimination. The ACLU initially gave the districts 30 days to lift the filter on the sites at issue.

Metro Schools referred all questions to the city's legal department.


Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090520/NEWS01/905200408/Metro+Schools+sued+over+block+on+gay+Web+sites+

the sooner these old-minded cronies go on their way to the great beyond, the better

time has a way of doing away with the old ways of thinking.

they will fade, and become extinct like the dinosaurs they are.

Anything with the words "gun" or "porn" is probably also blocked by the filter. Even though they may be innocent.

Should be easy enough to fix.

If this were simply a case of a careless administrator failing to tick the right boxes in the configuration of their filtering software, then the schools would have responded when the problem was drawn to their attention. Instead, according to the report, they have refused to cooperate, and it's been necessary to file a lawsuit. Sounds more like policy than a mistake.

Internet filters typically block certain words or certain categories of information or both.

And the software companies that develop the filters won't reveal their methodologies for blocking things, because they consider them proprietary. Many of these firms have religious or political biases and/or connections to group who want to censor information that they find objectionable.

In addition, filters are not perfect. Filters cannot block all specified items. Conversely, they do block much constitutionally protected information.

I've worked with several brands of academic web filters and they all have the ability to include or exclude specific sites.

If the administration wanted the sites unblocked they could have it done. Most likely someone is trying to promote their agenda over the students rights so I say GO GET 'EM ACLU!

Then the web sites that claim to cure gays would also be blocked.

It sounds like the proxy server or firewall was intentionally configured to block specific sites.

Generally speaking if a school bans a site it's because a human put that site on the list. The schools just buy the filter software/blacklists, which are set up elsewhere by people with all sorts of agendas. It's what leads to fun stuff like a high school's filters banning, say, Democratic Party-related websites.

The New York Times has been blocking the word "gay", too. They were one of the last publications in the liberal press to accept the word "gay" as suitable for publication, and their filters reflect the past "controversy".

It is disgusting in 2009. This is not 1954.