Internet Filters Block Everything Gay

"The impact on the Gay and Lesbian community is quite significant, especially for young people," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way Foundation, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.

The filtering software, used primarily by schools, libraries, employers, and parents, is designed to block pornographic and sexually explicit material from being accessed on a computer over the World Wide Web.

The problem, said Mincberg, is that many filtering software programs are also designed to filter out Web sites that contain certain words or subjects, including the words "Gay" and "sex," and such topics as "alternative lifestyles" and "AIDS."

Filtering software serves as a kind of monitor, sifting through information from Web sites, chat rooms, and mailing lists, and blocking out anything deemed undesirable by its programmer.

Bills are currently in both the U.S. House and Senate which, in varying degree, would require all schools and public libraries to offer at least one Internet terminal with filtering software installed. Neither bill has made it to the floor, but the Senate bill, a bipartisan offering, received hearings in early February.

The software programs retail for about $40 and differ in their level of sophistication. Most of the programs work by either filtering out "key words" - such as "Gay" or "Lesbian" - or entire Web site addresses.

The programs also enable users to "customize" their filtering programs by choosing various "categories" or topics they want to block. Sample topics include pornography, illegal activities, hate groups, and sexually explicit material.

But a growing number of companies also offer to filter out all Gay-related information, and this is what has alarmed Gay and other civil rights activists. Such filters, they argue, perpetuate negative messages about Gays. They also claim that the use of filters, particularly by public libraries, violates the public's constitutional right to the First Amendment freedoms of speech, expression, and association.

Software companies, on the other hand, argue that filtering information is harmless because it is optional - computer users choose whether or not to purchase and install filtering software.

"It provides peace of mind that kids won't be viewing inappropriate material," said Susan Getgood, a spokesperson for the Learning Company, a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures the filtering software Cyber Patrol.

But Mincberg says this "peace of mind" comes at the expense of Gays and others in such settings as libraries, because the filtering programs take away their right to have access to all of the information available on the Internet.

"We are very concerned about the free expression issues that it raises," he said.

Recently, Mincberg's organization filed a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit against Loudoun County (VA) library officials, after the library board voted to install filtering software on all of its public computers. The suit alleges that use of the software violates the public's right to free speech.

Loudoun County is the first county in the Washington, D.C., area to use filtering software, but it joins a growing number of public libraries around the country that have chosen to do so, according to the American Library Association.

The Loudoun library policy is also one of the strictest in the country. While some libraries offer some computers without filtering software to adults and minors who have parental permission, the Loudoun County Library Board made the unusual decision to install the software on all of its computers.

"The policy is blatantly unconstitutional," said Larry Ottinger, senior staff attorney for People for the American Way Foundation. "By its terms, [it] would reduce adults to the electronic equivalent of the kids' reading room."

The software the county chose to use, called X-Stop, is among the most "conservative" filtering software programs available, said Mincberg. Manufactured by Logon Data Corp., the software blocks out the usual pornographic Web sites, obscenities, and racial and ethnic slurs. But it also blocks out sites that contain the word "Gay," he said.

The impact of such "censorship," according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is potentially hazardous for young Gays, who increasingly rely on the Internet as a way to come out and communicate with other young Gays.

GLAAD conducted an exhaustive review of Internet filtering software last year and found that many filtering programs block non-sexual Gay Web sites as well as pornographic Web sites.

"The software developers are either unable or unwilling to consider that information about sexual orientation and identity has nothing to do with sexual behavior and everything to do with culture and identity," GLAAD stated in a report released in December.

The report, titled "Access Denied: The Impact of Filtering Software on the Lesbian & Gay Community," found that the level of anti-Gay "censorship" varies from program to program.

For example, CYBERsitter, manufactured by Solid Oak Software Inc., allows users to filter out information according to eight different categories. One category is "Gay and Lesbian Activities."

Because of this, GLAAD characterized CYBERsitter as among "the most discriminatory toward the Gay and Lesbian community."

Mark Kanter, Solid Oak's vice president of marketing, said CYBERsitter merely offers consumers what they want.

"[A Gay Web site] is something that the vast majority of our users wanted to have the ability to [block]," he said.

Loren Javier, GLAAD's Internet specialist, said CYBERsitter is part of a "very dangerous" trend.

"You don't see software companies offering filters to block out other segments of the population," he said. "You don't see filters that block out women's sites or people of color sites. It singles out the Gay and Lesbian community and sends a strong statement that there's something wrong with issues of sexual orientation and that they are something to be filtered."

An additional problem, he said, is that many programs inadvertently filter out Gay Web sites even if the user does not choose to block the information.

Cyber Patrol, manufactured by the Learning Company, for example, is labeled by GLAAD as one of the more Gay-friendly filtering programs, largely because its manufacturer does not specifically filter out Gay-related Web sites and often consults with GLAAD before it does filtering upgrades. Nonetheless, Cyber Patrol has still been known to inadvertently filter out Gay-related Web sites, said Javier.

The problem, he said, is that filtering programs are not "sophisticated" enough to distinguish between non-sexual, informational Web sites and sexually explicit sites.

Consequently, those who use Internet software filters "don't even know that they're missing out on information," he said.

"Many people don't think that software is blocking out any other information than what they choose to block, but that's just not the case," said Javier. "If you don't know that certain information is available to you in cyberspace, how do you know that you do not have access to it?"

The American Library Association strongly objects to the use of filters in public libraries and last summer voted to oppose the use of filtering software.

"It's one thing for parents to want to use filtering devices in their own homes, but it's another to impose that choice on everyone who wants to use a computer at a public library," said Steven Herb, chair of the ALA's intellectual freedom committee. "This is especially important for [Gay youth], because we need to provide information for kids who are facing difficult choices in their life. If they can't seek information that is vital to their decision-making, then we're failing them as an institution and a country."

The issue of filtering Internet information is likely to heat up now as the Loudoun County case moves into the U.S. Federal District Court in Alexandria.

Similar cases may follow as more libraries and schools continue installing the software on their public computers. For now, the Internet remains a wide open field in which many legal battles have yet to be fought, say some.

"[The use of filters] eliminates access to ideas and information that certain other individuals may dislike or have deemed 'harmful' to their own personal values system," said Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom. "By virtue of the filtering device, those people controlling the filter are trying to keep other people from accessing info."

Added Javier, "the Internet is a people's media, and it should continue to be a place where people can have a free exchange of ideas."

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